GateWay and Learning Interviews Pilot Cloud-Based Job Interview Solution

The Career Center at GateWay Community College teamed up with Phoenix-based tech company, Learning Interviews, to conduct cloud based job interview preparation. Learning Interviews, a knowledge capturing and sharing tool, is being used to help build interviewing skills in students, staff and members of the community.

Learning Interviews was originally created to retain and share knowledge between retiring baby-boomers and new employees at companies.

“We started the company to address brain drain, the vast amount of experience major companies are losing,” shared Michael Chaisson, chief operating officer and co-founder of Learning Interviews.  “We found our software not only has knowledge capturing applications but it is also used for sharing experience by recording stories. Our ability to let people sharing experiences by recording stories has limitless applications.”

Learning Interviews is a Phoenix based company associated with the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation located on GateWay's campus, where Chaisson was introduced to the Career Center.

The Career Center started using the software during the summer of 2013 to provide simulated job interviews to students. The interviews can be customized for an individual and done at the people’s own convenience, Career Center Director Kerry Sanderson explained about the software.

“The idea is that when you do a job interview with somebody you are being asked to share the best version of your personal story at work and our software helps you practice sharing your story,” Chaisson said. “Basically [Learning Interviews] asks you questions, you record yourself giving the answer, you watch your recording, you decide how you can do it better, you do it again and again, and at the end of the process you deliver better answers with more confidence.”

The Career Center can review the saved interview and give constructive feedback to the user.  Learning Interviews has made it so the user becomes self-aware and can self-correct, shared Sanderson.

“They self correct instead of us having to say ‘oh you blink too much, you have a twitch’,” Sanderson said. “So when they come back to us afterward it gets to be much more about the content, how to become more concise and to the point.”

With the use of Learning Interviews, the Career Center has been able to provide service to more people. Students are able to do the interviews at their convenience; that provides the Career Center with additional time to help more people.

“We have a limited staff so we have to come up with ways to reach as many people as possible and this has been a huge help in that sense,” Sanderson said.

The program also gives them the ability to do workshops with different programs around campus and provide a mock interview for each student. Faculty can work the mock interview into their curriculum and make the practice interviews a requirement, added Sanderson.

For example, GateWay’s Hydrologic Technology program has started working with the Career Center, on capturing interview questions to help prepare students for when the US Geological Survey comes to interview for internships.

Further opportunities are being explored for the use of Learning Interviews around GateWay.