A position description (or ‘PD’) outlines the tasks and responsibilities that a role entails. Without this, it can be hard to know what’s expected of you and what questions you may face in the interview. Here’s how to prepare for an interview without a position description:
Investigate the company website
Company websites are designed to portray the company’s personality and host key information about them. Look at the following sections: about, expertise, projects, sectors, people, news/blogs, and work with us pages. There’s a good chance you’ll pick up on the company’s culture and vision by investigating their website. You may also want to mention something you learnt from the website in the interview to show them that you’ve done your research.
Use the interview to find out the PD
Interviews aren’t only for companies to find out more about you, but also for you to find out more about the role and company culture. It’s a vital time for you to ask in-depth questions and really understand what you may commit yourself to.
Some questions you may want to ask about the role and company are:
Role specific:
What will my day to day look like? Can you further breakdown the tasks into a percentage?
What do you anticipate is the most challenging part of the role?
What type of management style do you have?
What projects will I be working on?
Who will my internal and external stakeholders be?
How will my success be measured after one month, three months and six months?
Work conditions and training:
What is your policy on hybrid work arrangements?
What does the onboarding and induction process like?
Company and culture:
What’s the company culture like? How social are the staff?
What excites you most about the company’s future?
Research the people who’ll be interviewing you
Having an understanding of who’ll be interviewing you and their role within the company will help you in crafting your questions and knowing who’s best to direct them to. For example, you may want to ask the person who’d be your manager what the day-to-day looks like, rather than the HR representative in the interview.
Look up other job ads for the same position and look through what tasks are listed
If you have years of experience within the role you’re interviewing for, you’ll likely already know what tasks and responsibilities are required of you. However, if you don’t have much experience, or want to consolidate tasks that you may have to complete, looking at other job ads for similar positions can help you attain a deeper understanding around what you’ll likely have to do. Having this understanding may help show your interviewers that you understand the role and want to take it on.
Talk to your recruiter
It’s a recruiter’s job to understand the roles that they put candidates forward for and pass on that information to them. Get in touch with us as recruiters will talk directly to the company and scope out what the role is, what’s involved and what they’re looking for, all without a position description. They’ll feed this back to you to ensure you’re prepared for the interview.
There’s no need in going into a job interview feeling unprepared, whether you’ve been provided with a position description or not. Taking time in the days before the interview to research, talk to your recruiter and understand what the role will likely entail, will give you a better chance at acing the interview.
