Obviously it’s important to know something about a company
before you apply for a job there, let alone go for an interview. Two representatives
from FDM, an international IT consultancy, came to deliver a Skills for Success
session on using SWOT analysis, a form of analysis commonly used in the
business world to look at companies and see where they might be going.
SWOT stands for Strengths (what the company does well),
Weaknesses (what it does badly), Opportunities (chances for market expansion),
and Threats (business competition for example). If you manage to cover all
these, you should have a fairly good knowledge of a company, as well as its
competition, and recent advances in the field. All this should give you plenty
to talk about in an interview. To give us some experience of this, they
presenters put us into groups and gave us half an hour to research a company. We
then took turns to give 5 minute presentations covering all the SWOT bases, and
whether or not we would buy or sell shares in the company at the moment. This
was good practice for similar tasks that could be set at the assessment centres
for a variety of companies.
Some tips were given for presenting too. Before you make
your presentation, think about your objectives, the audience you’re presenting
to, and the format of your presentation (powerpoint, flip chart or just
verbal). After you’ve designed and prepared your presentation, always remember
to rehearse it. Not only will this help you iron out any kinks, it’ll really
help you with nerves if you know what you’re doing. This doesn’t just apply to
assessment centres, but many different situations; being able to come up with a
comprehensive presentation under pressure is an impressive skill to have, and
SWOT gives a good framework for this.
Ed (Student Ambassador for the Faculty of Science)
For further help with applications and preparing for interviews, see the 'CVs, Applications and Interviews' section of the Careers Service website.
For further help with applications and preparing for interviews, see the 'CVs, Applications and Interviews' section of the Careers Service website.
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