Getting a Graduate Job at an Australian Top 4 Bank – Face to Face Interview

May 06, 2010

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This Post is part of the Australian Big 4 Bank Graduate Job Guide series.

The Face to Face Interview is the final stage in the recruitment process, and will involve you meeting two people from the relevant Bank who will generally ask you Behavioural Questions. The interview will generally be scheduled for approximately 45 minutes, but can run over or be much shorter depending on how the interview goes.

Behavioural questions are questions that are shaped to make you give an example of how you behaved or reacted as an answer. The following are examples of behavioural questions:

• Tell me about a time when you received negative feedback from your boss, and what you did in response?

• Tell me about an experience of yours where you had to go above and beyond expectations to achieve something?

• Tell me about a time when you led a team, and what was the outcome?

• Tell me about a time when you had competing priorities and not enough time to complete them all, and how you handled these different priorities?

These questions are surprisingly easy to prepare for, all you need to do is have a think about your past experience and the types of questions you are going to be asked, and match experiences to questions.

In general the interviewer will ask you behavioural questions that seek to explore your experience and capabilities in the following areas:

• Handling disagreement;

• Dealing with difficult people/situations effectively;

• Time management under duress;

• Hard work and diligence;

• Team work and Leadership;

So to nail this final step, think of examples of where you have dealt with the above issues or displayed the above characteristics, and practice being able to talk about these experiences for up to about 2 minutes at a maximum.

Finally, a question that is almost always asked at these interviews is “Why do you want this job?” or “Why do you want to work at XXX Bank?”. Unfortunately “I need a job” is not sufficient to nail this question, and I have found that being able to talk about experiences related to the industry and how you found them fascinating is the most effective way of answering this type of question.