Big Interview Help Center

Updates from January, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• admin 7:28 am on January 2, 2012 Permalink  

  About Mock Interviews 

  This is where the rubber meets the road, here you will be able to continually practice all kinds of interview questions until you come away a lean, mean interviewing machine.

  Step 1: Click PRACTICE INTERVIEWS on you navigation bar.

  You’ll now see four main interview practice categories to choose from:
  
  GENERAL - this section covers about 90% of the questions you’re likely to get in a job interview.

  BY INDUSTRY – here you’ll be able to choose practice interviews from dozens of industries and job roles. This is NOT meant to replace the GENERAL interviews, but only to complement them by offering you some industry specific questions.

  BY COMPETENCY – here you can choose from a variety of skill-sets and strengths your interviewer may be looking for in the right candidate.

  ADMISSIONS INTERVIEWS – here you can practice interviews by program type and school, including undergrad, grad, business school, law school and med school.
  
  Step 2: If you click GENERAL, you’ll be taken directly to a list of interviewers tailored to a wide array of types of experience. Whether you’re a C-Level exec wanting to polish up before meeting the board of directors, or you’re still in school trying to line up an internship, there are interviews in the GENERAL section to serve just about everybody.

  

  If you click either BY INDUSTRY, BY COMPETENCY or ADMISSIONS INTERVIEWS, you’ll be then prompted to select the type of interview you’re interested in.

  
  
  Step 3: You’ll now be prompted to “Give this interview a name.” For ease, most people name their interview based on the company they’re interviewing with (e.g. “ABC Company Interview”). This is especially helpful if you’re interviewing with multiple companies (or schools) who are looking for different attributes in their ideal candidate.

  
  
  Step 4: Begin Your Mock Interview – click “Click Arrow to Start” (or the play button on the interviewer). This will begin playing an interview question.

  To move to the next question you will click (as I’m sure you’ve guessed) “Next Question”. Now let’s take a brief look at the recording function.

  
  
  Step 5: Recording & Reviewing – the recording buttons should be pretty self-explanatory:

  Record (or Re-record) – to begin recording. There will be a 3 second countdown to give you a moment to prepare to answer.

  Play Back - play back the answer you’ve just recorded for review.

  Save – after recording an answer, you’ll have the option of saving by clicking Save, or discarding the answer by clicking Re-record.

  Delete – if you’ve saved an answer, but then decided against keeping it, just click Delete to remove it.

  Share – give you the ability to share a link to your answer with friends or colleagues for additional feedback.
  
  Step 6: Visit YOUR VIDEOS to review your saved answers. Once an answer is saved you can do a lot with it including reviewing, rating and sharing. All of that is covered in the next lesson.

   

• admin 7:47 pm on January 1, 2012 Permalink  

  Setting up Your Webcam and/or Audio 

  Setting up your webcam and audio is the first thing you should do in your Big Interview account.

  Step 1: In the upper right hand corner of the screen click YOUR NAME.

  

  Step 2: Now, on the YOUR ACCOUNT page click the tab called INTERVIEW SETTINGS.

  

  Step 3: You should now be on a page prompting you to “Choose your default interview type”.

  You can select between “Video & Audio” or “Audio only” (depending on whether or not you have a webcam.)

  

  Step 4: If you have the Adobe Flash plugin set up correctly in your browser, you should now see a slightly darkened screen with a small pop-up window in the middle of the screen. This will say “Adobe Flash Player Settings” and it asks you to either “Allow” or “Deny” biginterview.com from working with your webcam.

  

  Step 5: Right-mouse-click on the little pop-up box and choose SETTINGS.

  

  Step 6: You’ll now see the pop-up ask “Allow biginterview.com to access your camera and microphone?” Choose ALLOW, and check the REMEMBER box (this will remove the need to click ALLOW each time you start a new mock interview.)

  

  After checking ALLOW, click CLOSE. Your webcam will be automatically enabled, and you should begin seeing yourself on the left side of the screen under “Camera Set Up”

  Step 7: Below both “Camera Set Up” & “Microphone Set Up” you’ll notice a drop-down menu where you can choose the driver corresponding to your webcam and microphone. These should automatically default to the proper drivers, but in case your webcam or microphone are not enabled, you can select from the drop-down menu the best driver for your device.

  

  

  Step 8: Click UPDATE PROFILE and you’re ready to start!

   

• admin 7:30 am on January 2, 2011 Permalink  

  About Your Videos 

  Here we’ll learn about a few of the ways to review your recorded answers.

  Step 1: In the Mock Interview module

  
  
  Step 2: When you’re recording your interview answers, you’ll notice that below your webcam feed there are severals buttons – a RECORD, a PLAY BACK and a SAVE button.
  

  These are the only buttons you’ll see before you actually begin recording.
  
  Step 3: After you’ve hit the RECORD button, a 3-second countdown will start (giving you a couple moments to get ready).

  When recording has begun, you will see the word “RECORDING” on your webcam feed and you should see a white line flicker to let you know your voice is recording also. You will also see a big STOP button that allows you to end your recording.

  
  
  Step 4: After hitting STOP, you’ll notice the SAVE button is no grayed out, and the RECORD button now says RE-RECORD.
  
  Now you have a few choices to play with. You can click PLAY BACK to review your video. If you don’t like your recording simply click RE-RECORD to try again. Or if you’re satisfied with it click SAVE to save your recording to the Video Library. You can then either record more answers to the same question, or you can move on to the next question.
  
  Step 5: When you click SAVE, you’ll notice two more buttons appear. They are DELETE and SHARE buttons. Use DELETE to discard any recordings you want to remove.
  
  
  Step 6: The SHARE button does just what is says. If you want a colleague, friend or counselor to give you feedback, you can email them a link to your recording. You can even use the code snippet to embed the video on your blog or other social media profile. Note: the same SHARE button is also available in the Your Videos section (which we’ll go over now).
  
  
  Step 7: The Your Videos section is a great place to keep track of all your recordings. You easily review, rate and share all your saved videos.
  

   

• admin 7:29 am on January 2, 2011 Permalink  

  About Question Library 

  This is the place to go when you want to work on problem questions. You’ll be able to absorb some question-specific tips and also practice repeatedly (without having to go through a whole mock interview).

  Step 1: Go to Question Library on your top navigation bar. Here you’ll see lists of categories and questions covering everything in Big Interview.
  
  
  Step 2: After clicking on one of the questions, you’ll see relevant tips and even example answers. And you’re feeling bold enough, you can directly launch the actual question itself in the mock interview module.
  
  

   

• admin 7:27 am on January 2, 2011 Permalink  

  About Interview Roulette 

  The Interview Roulette is meant to help keep you on your toes by throwing random questions at you so you’re forced to think on your feet.

  It works in basically the same way as the typical interview in the Mock Interview module. And just as in the Mock Interview module, all your recordings are saved in the Your Videos section. If you have any difficulty enabling your webcam, check out Setting up your webcam for helpful tips.
  

   

• admin 7:25 am on January 2, 2011 Permalink  

  About the Interview Training section 

  It’s time to start learning those techniques that will land you your next job. In this article we’ll briefly introduce you to the INTERVIEW TRAINING section.

  Step 1: In your navigation bar, click on INTERVIEW TRAINING.
  

  You will now see a list of modules and within each module a list of lessons.

  The main module categories are:

  Module 1 – Interview Basics
  Module 2 – Landing the Interview
  Module 3 – Informational Interviews
  Module 4 – Interview Prep
  Module 5 – Acing the Interview
  Module 6 – Follow Up
  Module 7 – Answering the Top 10 Questions

  Regardless if you’re a seasoned interviewee or just starting out on your career, starting with the Interview Basics module is a smart decision.

  Step 2: To select a lesson click on the lesson name. (In this example we’ll start with Module 1 – Lesson 1: “The Value of a Proper Interview Education”).

  The lesson box will drop down slightly revealing a general description of the lesson, as well as offering you the option of either reading the lesson online or listening to an audio version.

  

  Step 3: Click READ ONLINE, and now you’ll be able to read the lesson. To return to the main Essentials page, either click “Back to Essentials” or simply hit the back button on your browser.

  

  Step 4: To keep track of your progress through the different lessons and modules, make sure to check off “Mark Completed” A little green check box will show up next to a completed lesson, letting you know you’ve already tackled it.