Big Interview is an online system that combines interview training and practice to help improve your interview technique and build your confidence. The platform provides challenging, virtual mock interviews for all experience levels and dozens of industries. It also has a database of thousands of interview questions with tips on how to answer them. You can use Big Interview to practice your answers to a variety of behavioral interview questions. In this article, we will be outlining steps to prepare for your behavioral interview using Big Interview.
You can access Big Interview by going to the main page and logging in with your Duke credentials.
Under Interviews > Learn, you have access to learning curriculums that offer general information and advice for job seekers and recent graduates including two interview curriculum tracks: The Fast Track and The Mastery Track. If you wanting to learn more about the interview process, these curriculums provide lessons, practice questions, and quizzes on topics such as types of interviews and interviewers, what to wear, common interview questions, and nonverbal communication.
The Fast Track is recommended for those who have an upcoming interview but do not have a lot of time to prepare. Total completion time for this track is 1.5 hours. The Mastery Track is for those have a longer time to prepare and entails more detailed content about difficult and competitive interviews.
You can also visit the Career Center Interviewing Guide to walk through what to expect from the interview process.
You might find it beneficial to write out key points for your practice interview questions. Big Interview has a tool under Interviews > Answer that enables you to build your answers for questions especially important or more difficult ones.
The Build Your Answer tool has answer guides to help you create and organize a great answer, using the recommended STAR method format. It features guides on creating strong stories as responses to behavioral interview questions such as “Tell me about yourself” and “What are your greatest weaknesses?”.
To build your answer, click start under the behavioral interview question you want to create an answer for and the tool will prompt you to write out bullet points for your interview story following the STAR method. For each part of the STAR method, the tool offers tips for how to organize your interview response. It also asks you to think about competencies that you are demonstrating through the specific interview story that relate to the job you are interviewing for.
Once you fill out all the sections under the tool, you can save and publish your answer. Now, you have a well-organized interview story that you can practice using the key points you outlined!
If you are looking to practice behavioral questions, go to Interviews > Practice. There are two tools here that you can utilize for practicing:
- Practice Sets
- Answer interview questions with a simulated interviewer
- Interview Roulette
- Practice a deck of 20 random interview questions
- My Videos
- Review feedback from the mock interviews and improve your interview responses
Big Interview recommends that you start with the Practice Sets section. In this section, you have access to interview decks categorized by general questions, questions by industry or role, by competency/skillset. For instance, you can practice interview questions for biomedical engineering under Industry > Engineering > Biomedical Engineering. Here, you will find a variety of interview decks related to Biomedical Engineering including relevant skills like organizational skills, analytical skills, and decision-making.
Now that you have found the interview decks, you can click “Practice with _________” to launch the mock interview with the simulated interviewer. Big Interview will ask if you would like AI feedback results for your interview responses before you proceed with the practice interview deck. The AI gives you feedback on eye contact, use of “ums” and other filler words, vocabulary, tone, rate of speech, and more. It is important to ensure that you have allowed your webcam and microphone to have access to Big Interview.
Once you begin the interview, you will view a short video of the interviewer asking you a questions and then record your response to the question. If you need any pointers on how to answer the question, you can refer to the “Tips” button on the bottom right of the interviewer video. You can also view tips by visiting “Tips & Answers” under the interview deck.
It is important that you ensure you saved your final answer to the question before moving to the next question. You have the option to re-record your response to a question if you would like.
When using these steps for the Big Interview platform, you will be more ready to tackle your next interview!
If you have any questions about the interview process or would like to schedule a mock interview with a career advisor, you can schedule a Career Center appointment on Handshake.
This article references information from the Big Interview Student Guide.
