Interview Tips and Advice
Interview Advice 🎙
Your CV gets you the interview, but your personality (and the prep you do) gets you the job.
Time and again we have seen great candidates make the same mistakes. Here are five things to always keep front of mind:
1. Do you have a panel of people interviewing? Be sure to connect with them all, and not just the one speaking to you.
2. Remember it’s a two-way thing. This interview is for you to find out about the company and the role, as well as for the employer to discover whether you are the right fit for the job. Prepare at least three questions before you arrive to show your interest, and don’t just ask about salary and benefits.
3. Demonstrate genuine passion but don’t overdo it. Fake enthusiasm gets spotted a mile off.
4. Be cautious of passive words that sound flaky – actually, literally, maybe, honestly etc. Use clear, concise language that expresses confidence and reliability.
5. Be yourself, but don’t get too personal. Whilst some interviewers love to get under your skin, some may be uncomfortable discussing personal subjects that are best kept to your private life.
We are always on hand to run through practice interviews and give you tips and advice through every stage. 📓
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Carole Hearn
Executive Consultant
Carole Hearn is a specialist Food & Drink Manufacturing recruiter and head-hunter with over 20 years' experience, specialising in middle and senior management permanent hiring and executive recruitment across Operations, Technical & Quality, NPD, Supply Chain, Engineering, Continuous Improvement and Commercial.
Latest Insights
Explore our latest market insights on all things food and drink manufacturing.
How specialist recruiters reduce downtime across critical site leads and technical roles
Your Engineering Manager resigns on a Friday afternoon. By Monday you've briefed three agencies. By Wednesday you're looking at twenty-two CVs, and eighteen of them have never set foot in a food environment. You've now lost most of a week and you're no closer to filling the role. The line is still running, the planned maintenance schedule is already slipping, and your Operations Manager has picked up a second job on top of their own. This is the point where the difference between a generalist agency and a specialist recruiter stops being a procurement preference and starts costing you output.
The true cost of a bad hire and why Food Manufacturers are struggling to hire middle-management roles
A new Shift Manager starts in March. By June the pattern is clear. Changeovers are taking longer than they used to, the paperwork lands late more often than not, and two of your stronger line leaders have started asking about roles at the site down the road. Nobody has done anything obviously wrong. The operation is just running worse than it was. That's what a bad hire in middle management usually looks like. It rarely announces itself, and it almost never shows up as a single event you can point at. It gets worse over time, and by the time you've named the problem you've lost six months.
When to Hire Permanent vs. Interim in Food Manufacturing
Your Technical Manager hands in their notice on a Monday morning. There's a BRCGS audit eight weeks out, a customer visit before that, and a quality management system only one person on site properly understands. By Monday afternoon, you're already behind. Production has its own version. A shift manager goes off sick with no return date. A supervisor steps up to cover, and three weeks later that supervisor is taking calls from an agency, because the extra responsibility arrived without the extra money. Both situations force the same decision. Do you run a permanent search and live with the gap, bring in an interim, or do both at once?
How specialist recruiters reduce downtime across critical site leads and technical roles
Your Engineering Manager resigns on a Friday afternoon. By Monday you've briefed three agencies. By Wednesday you're looking at twenty-two CVs, and eighteen of them have never set foot in a food environment. You've now lost most of a week and you're no closer to filling the role. The line is still running, the planned maintenance schedule is already slipping, and your Operations Manager has picked up a second job on top of their own. This is the point where the difference between a generalist agency and a specialist recruiter stops being a procurement preference and starts costing you output.
The true cost of a bad hire and why Food Manufacturers are struggling to hire middle-management roles
A new Shift Manager starts in March. By June the pattern is clear. Changeovers are taking longer than they used to, the paperwork lands late more often than not, and two of your stronger line leaders have started asking about roles at the site down the road. Nobody has done anything obviously wrong. The operation is just running worse than it was. That's what a bad hire in middle management usually looks like. It rarely announces itself, and it almost never shows up as a single event you can point at. It gets worse over time, and by the time you've named the problem you've lost six months.
When to Hire Permanent vs. Interim in Food Manufacturing
Your Technical Manager hands in their notice on a Monday morning. There's a BRCGS audit eight weeks out, a customer visit before that, and a quality management system only one person on site properly understands. By Monday afternoon, you're already behind. Production has its own version. A shift manager goes off sick with no return date. A supervisor steps up to cover, and three weeks later that supervisor is taking calls from an agency, because the extra responsibility arrived without the extra money. Both situations force the same decision. Do you run a permanent search and live with the gap, bring in an interim, or do both at once?
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