Added new employability pages covering competency interviews and intr… by jcholyhead · Pull Request #1722 · CodeYourFuture/curriculum

jcholyhead · 2026-01-28T19:51:17Z

What does this change?

Adds a new guide on introducing yourself in job interviews and competency based interviews

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Block/s

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Yes

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Page

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I have read the contributing guidelines
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@kfklein15 @nparker94

…oducting yourself

netlify · 2026-01-28T19:51:21Z

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nparker94 · 2026-01-29T10:07:39Z

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/competency-interview/index.md

+
+## A bonus tip
+
+But what if you can’t tailor your answer or if the question is too specific to use any of your pre-prepared answers? Here’s my secret tip…Offer an alternative question and answer that instead. To continue with the conflict resolution with a co-worker example, let’s say I’ve never quarrelled with a co-worker, or at least, I don’t have an answer ready for that, but I do have a conflict resolution scenario with a customer ready to go…ask the interviewer if you can answer _that_ question instead — and then answer it. Not only does it sidestep awkward silences, it shows adaptability, flexibility and gives you an opportunity to showcase your experience in a different way. I’ve done this in many interview situations, and nobody has ever pulled me up on it or refused to let me answer my alternative question.


I agree this is a good strategy but I think it's important to highlight that you should tell the interviewer you are answering a slightly different question. I know you've said that but I think it would be good to emphasise it more because I have had so many people answering different questions to the one I've asked in interviews which can often be a sign or poor listening skills.

nparker94 · 2026-01-29T10:11:53Z

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/introducing-yourself/index.md

+- Criticism of yourself — this isn't the time to tell me you suck at paperwork (true story)
+- Inappropriate personal information — I don't need to know that you have a bad relationship with your family (true story)
+- Badmouthing current/past employer — don't do this; no matter how eloquently you describe your past employer's faults, there's a little voice in the back of my head wondering if you were the problem (many true stories)
+


Another answer that puts me off that I've seen a lot here is if a candidate goes straight in for the hard sell, "I am Natalie and I'd be great for this job because of X,Y,Z". No harm in highlighting all your great skills and experience but I didn't ask "Why should we hire you".

Yes, great idea!

nparker94

Very useful content :)

kfklein15

I love it - I can see you when I read it all.
I just chaged the first person to third person, to stay with our curriculum standard :)

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/competency-interview/index.md

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/introducing-yourself/index.md

kfklein15 · 2026-01-29T10:40:52Z

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/introducing-yourself/index.md

+- Criticism of yourself — this isn't the time to tell me you suck at paperwork (true story)
+- Inappropriate personal information — I don't need to know that you have a bad relationship with your family (true story)
+- Badmouthing current/past employer — don't do this; no matter how eloquently you describe your past employer's faults, there's a little voice in the back of my head wondering if you were the problem (many true stories)
+


Yes, great idea!

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/introducing-yourself/index.md

org-cyf-guides/content/employability/interview/competency-interview/index.md

illicitonion

This generally looks great, thank you so much!

A couple of thoughts:

In the introducing yourself section (and indeed in your example intros at the bottom), I'd probably also mention that people should come across as interested in the particular company/role? Even "Early career James" reads to me a little generic "I'm interviewing at 20 companies and don't remember which one this one is". A little "And I've heard how well YourCorp supports juniors" or "I love that YourCorp builds an app I use every day, and how the app never breaks" or something goes a long way.
We have an "introducing yourself in interviews" workshop in class and also some prep we expect people to do beforehand. It feels like we should do a little consolidation here? Maybe that prep piece can just become "Read this guide"? (And maybe we should fold a couple of pieces from the prep into this guide too)? The prep (https://github.com/CodeYourFuture/curriculum/blob/main/common-content/en/module/induction/interview-introductions/index.md?plain=1) if there are any edits you're interested in making :)

I've also given you write permissions to this repo - in the future if you push a branch directly to it, you will get deploy previews automatically :)

Co-authored-by: KFK <[email protected]>

Added new employability pages covering competency interviews and intr…

39049bc

…oducting yourself

github-project-automation bot added this to Curriculum Planning Jan 28, 2026

github-project-automation bot moved this to 📋 Backlog in Curriculum Planning Jan 28, 2026

nparker94 reviewed Jan 29, 2026

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github-project-automation bot moved this from 📋 Backlog to 👀 In review in Curriculum Planning Jan 29, 2026

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jcholyhead and others added 6 commits February 25, 2026 22:53

Change to third person

0d3b10f

Co-authored-by: KFK <[email protected]>

Change perspective to third person

cc9e1b8

Co-authored-by: KFK <[email protected]>

Updated Interview guidance to use consistent 3rd person perspective

e289bc7

Co-authored-by: KFK <[email protected]>

Merge branch 'main' into content-update/employability-interviews

6998b2a

updated interview employability guidance with PR suggestions

4fd74c7

tidied up final example dialogue

0362181


		## A bonus tip

		But what if you can’t tailor your answer or if the question is too specific to use any of your pre-prepared answers? Here’s my secret tip…Offer an alternative question and answer that instead. To continue with the conflict resolution with a co-worker example, let’s say I’ve never quarrelled with a co-worker, or at least, I don’t have an answer ready for that, but I do have a conflict resolution scenario with a customer ready to go…ask the interviewer if you can answer _that_ question instead — and then answer it. Not only does it sidestep awkward silences, it shows adaptability, flexibility and gives you an opportunity to showcase your experience in a different way. I’ve done this in many interview situations, and nobody has ever pulled me up on it or refused to let me answer my alternative question.

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jcholyhead commented Jan 28, 2026

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