Internal Interview

[minimods]

I am working in IT for a local government, and been in the current job for 9 months or so. Later this week I've got an internal interview for the same job at the higher grade. The interview will be with the department boss who I know well obviously and somebody I might not know.

I'm looking for some advice for the interview because although I know I can do the job, the interview is normally a massive stumbling block. Talking about myself is uncomfortable for me, so I am worried.

Anybody been in a similar situation or interviewed for an internal position before? What might I expect and any advice for not only getting through but really impressing the panel?

Thanks

[conanius]

I would be amazed if this didn't include at least some generic 'competency' type interview.

If you can check on internal HR pages the details of the competency levels you need at the new jobs level, try and get 1 or 2 really good examples of you doing things at that level.

Break this down into an easy to remember set of 4 points.

1 - Situation - what was going on
2 - Task - What did you work out you had to do because of what was going on
3 - Action - What did you end up doing, did you have any issues doing it?
4 - Result - this is the key bit. What is the so what of what you did. What changed as a result?

So, to try and put that into language that might work for you as a worked example...

1 - Situation - When working in the IT team I noticed that users didn't have a good way to request new accounts, meaning we regularly got incomplete details to process their requests.

2 - Task - I realised that we could make life easier for the users, and for IT by creating some online web forms to log all this information.

3 - Action - I spoke to the IT teams to work out what the core information we needed was, got the web team to build some trial templates and got a group of test users to test the forms. There were some minor amendments needed, and we took onboard feedback to consider for future work.

4 - Result - we delivered this work with no major expenditure and within 2 weeks. We now received over 20 requests a week from customers with all the correct information which vastly improves our service and efficiency.

I know that is a crap example really, but it makes you have an idea of how to word it. That's probably about the minimum detail you want to talk about, but try not to talk for much more than a minute with your replies. Otherwise it can drone on a bit I find...

There may also be some generic 'Why do you want this role' 'what are you good at' 'what do you need to improve at' type questions

Hope this helps

[pikeyboy]

Also dont think becaue you know the interviewing manager its any less formal than a pukka interview.

[skeeterm5]

Try to pretend you don't the interviewer, this helps you to make sure you say everything you want to. Don't assume that you will get 'credit' for things your current manager knows.

S

[minimods]

Thanks guys! The competencies stuff is pure gold. I have found a load of information from the HR section of the intranet including examples of interview questions.

If anybody has any other experience or information it would be much appreciated.