"Even now, I hate behavioural based interview questions," says job mentor Catherine, who has personal experience of some of the difficulties new migrants face when they first arrive in New Zealand.
Before Catherine even arrived from the United Kingdom six years ago, she had contacted a recruitment agency which sent her examples of questions she would be asked in interview situations, and the sort of answers she would be expected to supply.
The IT consultant says questions such as "tell me a little about yourself" were very different from those that she had experienced in England, where interviewers tend to focus on finding out about a candidate's skills and experience.
"It's hard understanding the concept of behavioural questions, as opposed to relying on your skill set," Catherine says. "They are quite unique to New Zealand."
"And I had the advantage of being an English speaker, I could understand the questions and figure out what to say," she says, highlighting the challenge such questions pose for immigrants who do not have English as their first language.
Catherine has brought some of her own experiences to her role as a job mentor. For the past four months she has been working with her job seeker, who would like to return to the IT industry after a five year absence.
Catherine's job seeker comes from the Philippines, although he is a New Zealand citizen and has been living here for more than a decade.
He previously worked as an oracle database administrator and graduated with a computing qualification in the Philippines.
But Catherine says IT is a difficult industry to return to after a career break because it is "critical" that skills are kept up to date.
She says they began the job search by getting to know each other, gaining an understanding of what her job seeker was hoping to achieve, looking at where he had positioned himself in the past, and what he was actually doing to find work.
They also spent about three weeks working on her job seeker's CV, and adapting it to the New Zealand marketplace.
"We spent a lot of time trying to explain his previous work experience, his level of expertise, what organisations he had worked for, what they did and their size.
"We did a little bit of translation, 'New Zealandising words', while trying to bring through his personality and style. We also tried to reduce the information to relevant things."
The next step in the job search was to apply for positions through recruitment agencies, but they suffered a setback when the agencies advised them that the communication skills of Catherine's job seeker needed to improve to meet the standards required for employment in the IT industry.
"When he gets nervous and is in an uncomfortable situation, such as a job interview his English deteriorates, Catherine explains.
The pair set about working on the problem by tape recording interview practice sessions, and viewing them to see what areas needed working on.
Catherine also arranged for a colleague to formally interview her job seeker, in the style that he would face in real interview situations – complete with the dreaded behavioural interview questions.
"He found it very challenging, going through those questions. He would take them too literally," Catherine says.
"When he was asked to tell the interviewer a little more about himself, he did not realise it was a question asked to put him at ease, and to test his ability to articulate in a concise manner."
The pair have spent time coming up with potential answers to questions Catherine expects he will be asked in interviews.
They have also tackled another potential stumbling block – her job seeker's honesty.
"We have had to work on his honesty, trying to get him to understand the question and turn it into something positive.
"For example, when he is asked about a problem he has faced in the workplace, he answers with the problem, rather than moving on quickly to talk about what he did about it."
They also looked at physical aspects of the interview situation. Catherine helped her job seeker to understand that sitting in the seat farthest away from the interviewer is off-putting. He had previously done this because someone had advised him that it would help him to project his voice.
The two are still working on improving interview skills, but have begun applying for jobs again.
Catherine's job seeker has also undertaken some voluntary work as a database and PC support worker for charities, in an effort to gain more recent work experience and a good reference.
Although their efforts are yet to yield success, Catherine says they will continue to apply for more IT jobs before reassessing whether her jobseeker needs to consider some other field of work as a stepping stone to returning to the IT industry.
Catherine says her job seeker is going through a "big personal change" and she is also finding the experience personally rewarding.
"You get to meet so many different people at Rose's Tuesday night sessions, which I recommend mentors attend to hear other people's experiences.
And the job seekers are really appreciative of the work we do to help them."