Alberto prepared for a high-stakes interview panel by attending an improv session the night before and working through frameworks with two study partners. When asked an unexpected EDI question, he pivoted using pre-prepared examples and a three-point answer structure. All three from his study group got the job.
I was feeling quite overwhelmed by the whole process, having heard from colleagues that it was a big deal, that it involved a lot of preparation and a lot of work. And obviously having— you've got a big panel and lots at stake. So yeah, I had been warned that I had to prep it well. And so I was feeling a bit nervous about the whole process. The night before the interview was actually one of the live sessions where we had the improvising dealing with the unexpected. And I was thinking, should I not join because I've got too much going on? I'm just going to relax. But I ended up joining it. It was quite fun. I just had loads of fun because it helped you like shake the nerves off a bit and just relax. I mean, I was feeling nervous. I'm not going to lie. Obviously, dealing with the nerves is a big deal. And the better mindset you have by the end is definitely going to help because you're going to come out more natural. You're going to come out more confident. But I even slept much better than I thought I would be. I slept fine the night before. I mean, I had questions expected, like the EDI question that I got, but it was asked in a different way. And interestingly, I started to give my answer and they stopped me and said, no, no, we've asked you specifically this, so focus on that. And I had to like improvise and come up with a different solution or a different answer. But again, because I have thought about examples that I could give in this section, I just basically threw a different example in that was more tailored to what they were asking me. So yeah, it was, I managed to get out of the semi-curveball that I was asked by falling back to examples I had prepped before. And obviously, yeah, the 3-point structure with a summary at the end was definitely helpful because you could see that by the time I finished saying that, they would all take notes at the same time, which means that going back to the examples I had just covered, they'd be, okay, yes, he's definitely covered 3 things. I mean, I think In my case, it was definitely instrumental for a number of reasons. They gave me a routine to follow. They gave you a structure to work on and the frameworks to get your structures for your answers right. There's loads of video materials. And then I think what's probably the best thing is the social aspect of it. I ended up linking with 2 of the other members. We prepped together in like private sessions and ultimately we all 3 got the job. So definitely. linking with people and finding people to partner with and who are going through the same thing, and you can see how they answer, how they structure things, or the feedback for you from your answers. It was definitely very helpful, and in the end it paid off for all 3 of us. So yeah, definitely those are the highlights for the, for the Academy. Yeah.
