8. Mock Interview

I actually recorded my mock interview in my first take, which I thought was pretty successful. The overall recording was fairly long, over 16 minutes long. I tried to guarantee the interview would run smoothly by writing down my answers to all the questions before recording my interview and referring back to my written answers while answering questions so that I didn't stumble over what I was going to say, stutter, or hesitate. My written answers were pretty thorough, each one was at least a solid paragraph long because I wanted to have developed responses that addressed the situation, action I took, and result of my action.

I think the recording went smoothly and I think I delivered my answers pretty well. I made sure to not just read my answers off the page because I didn't want to sound monotone and as if I was reciting something. I wanted my answers to be full of passion and excitement and I wanted my personality to shine through the interview. In order to accomplish this, I added some improvisational lines at the end of each response to make the reply sound more natural and I did not read my answer off word for word but mostly paraphrased what I wanted to say.

Some aspects of my interview I could've worked on were how I recorded it - I could've had a peer ask me the questions instead of awkwardly asking myself and answering myself; that scenario would've been more similar to an actual interview. Another thing is I could've used less fillers while talking and not repeated so many words in the same sentence or within a few sentences of each other. I feel like I was somewhat repetitive with my word usage and it probably would've been a more eloquent interview if I answered using different word choices.

Overall, however, I enjoyed doing this simulation because it brought some good interview questions on my radar. Usually when I think of interviews I don't always think of the unique questions that I was asked for this assignment. I also have maybe one or two scenarios I always use to answer interview questions and this mock interview helped me expand my real life examples I can pull in to actual interviews to help answer the question and demonstrate why I would be a good candidate. The interview was fun to complete and helped me be more introspective and reflect further on how I have grown thus far as a student and individual.