Deakin teams with Montage Talent to build student interviewing skills

The partnership will allow Deakin students to practice job interviews in a comfortable environment with real-time feedback provided by the University’s academic and careers counselling services.

The video interviewing tool was launched last week at Deakin University’s Experience and Employment Expo at the Melbourne Burwood campus, which saw 100 exhibitors connect with more than 3,000 students and graduates.

Pro-Vice Chancellor Graduate Employment Professor Dineli Mather said Deakin was committed to ensuring its graduates were prepared for the job market, which included ensuring they could confidently step into interviews that could launch their careers.

“Job interviews are, by their very nature, a daunting prospect, but video interviews can be especially stressful as there is the additional pressure of answering questions while being recorded and the clock is ticking,” Professor Mather said.

“Students can use the tool in the comfort of their own homes plus the interviews are saved for posterity so they can review it in two or three months’ time and see how far they’ve progressed.

“Students can also send a link to their best interview to an employer along with their CV, which demonstrates not only their enthusiasm, but also their grasp of technology – an essential skill for today’s job seekers.”

Deakin’s Manager of Graduate Recruitment Services, Gavin Walker, said the video interviewing technology addressed an unmet need in the graduate recruitment space.

“Video interviewing is becoming more and more prevalent in graduate recruitment, especially among larger organisations who conduct large-scale recruitment drives, as employers look for more efficient and cost-effective ways to screen multiple candidates,” Mr Walker said.

Mr Walker said the new technology from Montage Talent allowed the Graduate Recruitment Services team to assess students’ performance in more detail than ever before.

“From a graduate recruitment perspective, the practice interviews give my team the opportunity to assess a student’s needs before a careers meeting and the ability to provide detailed and meaningful feedback on tangible things they need to work on, based on my team’s strong industry experience,” Mr Walker said.

“Students are asked a mix of competency and behavioural-based questions and we can tell not only if they’re delivering their answers using the industry-standard STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) technique, but also whether they are competent enough to examine a question and highlight their relevant transferrable skills.

“We also give them a time limit of 90 seconds to answer each question, which means they learn to think on their feet and come up with the kind of succinct answers that employers are looking for in a real interview.”