Interviewing and failing...

My interviewing and advising exam is in the near future*. I am concerned.

Let me give you a short explanation. You go into a room with a client. You have twenty minutes. They tell you their problem. You ask them questions about the bits they have missed out and you need to know. Then you give them some advice, a few options and advantages and disadvantages of each.

In usual LPC style the assessment is highly artificial. You have to say certain things in certain order in a certain way. You have to summarise what the client has said at particular times of the interview. There are about 6-7 points you can ask them questions on. Some of these are crucial - i.e. if you don't get that information, you will fail. This makes sense, as it is information that will change your advice. Others are less important.

As a great surprise to myself I was competent in my mock assessment. This was despite only asking two questions, and forgetting to set out my advantages and disadvantages of my options in the required way. In other words I told the client what they were but I didn't say stuff like "the advantages of Option 1 are..." etc.

I don't normally suffer from nerves. In my previous job I spent hours and hours talking to clients. Daily. A situation where they asked me something and I had to totally wing it is not unknown.

So why is it that this twenty-minute jumping-through-hoops exercise is so difficult to contend with? Bah!

*excessive detail could out me, so try to cope without knowing exactly when it is.