A personal interview is a formal discussion between a single interviewer or a group of interviewers (professors of colleges, employees of organizations, industry recruitment experts, alumni etc. ) and an interviewee (aspirant) to check each other’s suitability. Since in many cases, the interviewers are spoilt for choice and the interviewees are not, a personal interview turns out to be an interviewer–questioning and interviewee–answering session.

All organizations and all institutions conduct personal interviews, generally as the final round of their admission processes.

Personal Interviews are broadly of two types…

Freewheeling Interviews: In them, the interviewers try to break the ice and make you comfortable so that you can answer the questions asked by the interviewers with an optimal combination of heart and brain. Freewheeling Interviews generally amount to ninety-five percent of all interviews. 

Stress Interviews: In them, the interviewers try to put pressure on and make youunsteady so that you can answer the questions asked by the interviewers spontaneously and ad lib. Stress interviews are generally conducted when the interviewers think that you have already demonstrated your knowledge and tact in different fields.

Mainly four things are evaluated in personal interviews:

• Personality Related: Whether you know about yourself and have the clarity of thought about your life’s journey and the relationship (cause and effect) between your past, your present and your future.
• Academics/Work Related: Whether you have a thorough knowledge of things that are the two of the most important things in your life till now, i.e., your academics and your work experience (if you have it) and represent your candidature.
• General Awareness Related:Whether you keep yourself abreast of the why and how of what’s happening around you, especially of those things which are associated with you. For example, your country’s economy or the latest developments in your graduation discipline.
• Miscellaneous: These stem from your answers to the above questions. For example, if you say that you are an analytical person, then they might give you situations to analyze. Or, if you say that you are interested in dancing, then they might ask you of any relationship between dancing and marketing (mainly to check your presence of mind).

1. An interview is a formal occasion and you must be well prepared for it – not just academically but also presentation-wise.
2. It is not important to know everything about everything, but it is essential that you are aware of what you know and what you don’t.
3. It is significant that you gauge what is the purpose of any interview and what questions may be asked there based of many things like previously asked questions, organizational facts etc.
4. It is vital that you keep yourself generally aware of yourself and all things related to you – right from the company that produces your handwash to the macroeconomics of your country – to the level that is expected of you.
5. The ratio of converts in any interview is very low and lakhs of people prepare for it every season. And therefore, it is absolutely critical that you have a mentor guiding you towards conversion.