Leicester award session 3

Today was going to be my final leicester award session with Santander, and it was the day of the practice interview with the company. I felt quite prepared for this interview as I had prepared for the interview by getting friends to ask me competency questions that may be asked by a company, and me answering these questions. I had practiced answering a wide variety of questions such as "Why work for Santander?", "Describe a time when you have shown initiative", "What motivates you?", and more.

When I arrived at Santander, I met with my 2 interviewers, 1 of whom I had met before. I was led to a private room and I was told by the interviewer the outline of the interview and how long it should take and whether I was ready to start. I told him that I was ready and he begun the interview.

The interviewer started off with some basic questions about my CV, asking me what I did during the time that I was working at certain places, the tasks that I performed, and what I learnt working at those places. The interviewer seemed pretty stern and did not smile much, this got me a little worried but i tried to ignore it. He then asked me "why apply for Santander?", I answered by explaining that I applied to Santander because they are a leading financial service provider with a global presence. They have also won many graduate and employment rewards which shows that they place emphasis on helping and developing their employees which I believe is very important.

Then he moved on to asking me competency questions, and I was really surprised with the questions asked as they were very different to the questions that I had expected and practiced for. This meant that I had to think of a lot of answers on the spot and I found this part of the interview quite challenging.

Here is a brief outline of the questions that were asked, and before I answered these questions, I reminded myself to use the STAR method and break the questions up and answer in as much detail as possible.
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Tell me about a time when you have had to make a decision or take an action without a clear understanding of what was expected.


Give me an example of when it has been really important for you to understand someone's needs or requirements in order to successfully deliver and difficult target/task/objective.

Tell me about a time when you have sucessfully encouraged others to work more as a team in order to achieve a shared target or goal.

Describe a situation when you were given a reponsibility for a task or project where you had no real expertise or experience.

Give me an example of a time when it was important for you to analyse the business or commercial implications of an action or decision you were taking.

After the interview was over, I was given feedback for each answer, and feedback on my overall performance during the interview. The interviewer told me that he was giving me the impression that he seemed like a harsh guy on purpose, to see if I would get put off by him. He also said that I still performed well and I was very confident and easy to get along with. The areas that I could have improved on were my answers, as some of the answers could have been more precise and some of my answers did not fully address the question that the interviewer had asked. This meant that I should take my time to focus on the question and understand it before answering too quickly.

I believe that the final session with Santander provided me with very valuable experience on how competency interviews in large companies work. It will definitely help me when I apply for jobs and I also learnt many of my strengths and weaknesses through taking part in this programme. From the Leicester award program, I have prioritized on improving many of my weaknesses by taking time to practice and prepare for tasks that are coming up. I also need to improve on working as a team, being more consultative and listening and contributing more to other team members input.