Studying a postgraduate course... but no HR experience

Hi Giovanna - congrats from me, too. There will be people who applied for this role and who were not shortlisted for interview, so there must be something beyond your application that impressed.

What broad industry are you applying to get into? I will try to find a few previous discussion threads that may be useful and relevant to the role you are applying for.

Good luck in the interview - its a great achievement getting this far and shows you are doing something they like. Keep that in mind...

In addition to the advice from colleagues

The interview will probably be competence based so some /most of the questions are likely to be along the lines of...

*Tell me about a time when you had to coach a manager/someone to improve
* Can you think of an example when you had to deal with an under performing employee
*Describe a way in which you improved the way something was done at work

The best way to spend some of your time between now and the interview is to write down and then analyse some examples from your life, hobbies and studies that show the same sort of competencies that are being looked for and think through how you would neatly turn your non work examples into relevant examples for the recruiter...

Go through the JD/Person Spec and try and identify the 5/6 key competencies you think they will look for and have different examples prepared for each.

Have a look at the STAR technique for answering interview questions and try and map out some thoughts about each section.

Best of luck

Dear All,

I am so grateful for all your support! The job position is in hospitality sector ,in which i currently work now . The only bit of the job description that concerns me is the fact that the candidate must demonstrate knowledge of hr databases and hr daily tasks.... but for the rest I believe I can match the role. I am not sure if demonstrating knowledge does actually mean that I have to be aware of what an hr does (in this case I learnt a lot at Uni) or if I have to show experience. But as I said the recruiter is aware that I don't have experience and despite all I have passed the telephone screening. Now for the interview, I will try to show my motivation (perhaps i can show him that I know how to write a job description or a list of question to ask during an interview ) ...this is the only way I can show my motivation. I am praying a lot because for me this is not just a door, it might be the door and I would just let the recruiter know that his decision might change my life, which I believe it is one of an hr professional's prerogative.

Hi Giovanna,
You say you are in a kind of admin post as a reservations coordinator so, as you dont have any directly relevant skills in a HR post, I would think about what transferable skills you can pick from your current role and focus on where you can draw broad comparison. So, for example, Writing skills, High level of accuracy, Communication skills, these are all things that you will do in your current role. The more HR specialist things that you may not have encountered, if you research and show that you at least have a theoretical understanding of what is expected, this should stand you in good stead. Also, I would be trying to understand the culture of the organisation by looking at their values/mission statement. In my experience a large part of why one candidate is chosen over another is whether they will 'fit' with the team/department.
Good luck