If you teach business education to high school students, chances are that you need to cover job interview skills as part of your career readiness lessons. After all, developing these skills can mean the difference between students earning jobs and not getting the opportunities they deserve.
To ensure your students succeed, you should have lessons and practice activities that help learners become familiar with the interview process.
In this article, you'll discover four of the best job interview lesson plans for high school students:
- In the Interview Hot Seat from CalCRN
- The Job Interview from Texas CTE
- Job Interview Skills Activities Lesson Bundle from Career and Employment Prep
- "What I Wished I'd Learned in High School" Job Interview Bundle
After reading, you'll have a better picture of the resources available to decide what's best for your classroom.
1. In the Interview Hot Seat from CalCRN
The California Career Resource Network (CalCRN) is a California Department of Education program intended to help students prepare for successful careers, regardless of their chosen industry. CalCRN provides free lesson plans and training videos to assist teachers in covering career planning topics.
In the Interview Hot Seat is a lesson plan that presents the challenges and opportunities of job interviews to high school students. It uses a combination of printed and internet-based resources to acquaint students with interview terminology and lines of questioning designed around California state standards.
The lesson plan also includes a series of student handouts designed to foster thinking about the subject:
- Speed Interview Questions
- Vocabulary
- Common Interview Questions Worksheet
- Common Interview Questions Sample Answers
- Legal vs. Illegal Interview Questions
- Lesson Resources
One of the interesting aspects of this lesson plan is its focus on ensuring students know what to expect in an actual interview, including reviewing legal and illegal interview questions around subjects like age, disability status, and military service.
How Much Does This Lesson Plan Cost, and Who Is It Intended For?
Every resource from CalCRN is available for free for instructors and learners.
Between the several worksheets and other resources, In the Interview Hot Seat covers more than just the interview itself. This makes it a reliable option if you need lessons to fill several class periods.
However, these lesson plans focus more on speed interviewing than a traditional interview format, which might mean supplementing this resource with one or more other options.
2. The Job Interview from Texas CTE
Texas CTE is a service of the Texas Education Agency that provides free CTE resources to teachers and students. The materials are aligned with Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) requirements but can work in any state.
The Job Interview lesson plan is designed to take three 45-minute instructional periods and includes a variety of resources intended to help students prepare for interviews.
In these interview lesson plans, you'll find:
- A PowerPoint presentation with speaker notes
- A vocabulary list for students
- Sample job applications
- A 90-second speech worksheet
- Questions and a script for interviewing class partners
- 101 job interview questions to distribute randomly
- Additional worksheets about job interviews
- A scoring rubric for mock interviews
These resources help students feel confident in sharing about themselves so they can practice a mock interview with a partner in class.
How Much Does This Lesson Plan Cost, and Who Is It Intended For?
All resources from Texas CTE are available for free for teachers and students. This makes this lesson plan a good option for instructors who want materials they can quickly incorporate into their existing business education lesson plans.
Overall, there is a lot of content here to help students participate in mock interviews. The worksheets will help them generate ideas, and the robust library of questions does well to simulate what interviewers could ask in a professional situation.
In addition, the included PowerPoint presentation and speaker notes allow you to add these lessons seamlessly.
3. Job Interview Skills Activities Lesson Bundle from Career and Employment Prep
Why settle for just a single resource when you can use several to reinforce critical concepts and skills?
Career and Employment Prep is a reputable seller on the Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) marketplace. They offer the Job Interview Skills Activities Lesson Bundle, a series of classroom resources designed to help students develop the communication skills they'll need to navigate the interview process successfully.
As a bundle, this package brings together six instructional resources that are available separately:
- Job Interview Skills Lesson
- Job Interview Questions Small Group or Writing Prompt Activity
- Escape the Job Interview Game
- Job Interview Checklist
- Job Interview Infographics
- Employment Search or Job Interview Puzzles
In total, teachers receive 37 pages of resources, ranging from planning and preparing for an interview to games and activities to help learners memorize key terms. The materials should cover about one week of class time.
The highlight of this bundle may be the Escape the Job Interview game, which requires learners to solve five puzzles to unlock the door to their job interview "escape room."
How Much Do These Lesson Plans Cost, and Who Are They Intended For?
Costing $8 for all six resources, the Career and Employment Prep bundle is a good value for most business education teachers. You can also purchase each activity individually for under $3.
These resources are best for teachers who want to move beyond the typical mock interview to incorporate learning games and activities into their job interview lessons.
However, these resources are still tied explicitly to job interviews, so you'll need other resources to teach additional communication skills in your classroom.
4. "What I Wished I'd Learned in High School" Job Interview Bundle
"What I Wished I'd Learned in High School" is another notable curriculum provider on the TpT platform. Among the many career-related lesson plans this seller offers is an extensive Job Interview Bundle.
This resource focuses on nine common questions students might be asked during a conventional corporate interview:
- “Tell me a little about yourself.”
- “Why do you want to work here?”
- “What are your greatest strengths?”
- “What is your greatest weakness?”
- “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
- “What are three words to describe yourself?”
- “How do you handle stress and pressure?”
- “How would you deal with an angry customer?”
- “Do you have any questions for me?”
The resource goes step-by-step through these questions, providing students with context via a workbook, handouts, and teacher resources.
To facilitate a conversation around the nine interview questions, teachers also gain access to these materials:
- A unit introduction simulating good and bad interviews.
- Complete 50-minute lesson plans for each of the nine questions.
- Notes and tips for success in job interviewing, including information on illegal questions.
- Teacher tips, including how to facilitate a successful group interview.
- A mock interview rubric and response sheet.
With nine main lessons and 128 pages of material, this package offers enough for a two-week instructional unit.
How Much Do These Lesson Plans Cost, and Who Are They Intended For?
The "What I Wished I'd Learned in High School" Job Interview Bundle is available on TpT for $35, which is more expensive than other options on this list.
One of the most significant advantages of this resource is that while it's designed for a typical high school business class, it includes resources for scaffolding to any learning environment, including distance learning and special education. This means you'll likely save time otherwise spent adapting your instruction for students in special populations.
However, if you spend two weeks focusing almost exclusively on standard interview questions, your students could miss out on other aspects of preparing for an interview.
Need More Than Interview Lesson Plans for Your Communications Course?
Choosing the right lesson plans can make all the difference between your high schoolers exceeding expectations on their first job interviews or struggling to find opportunities to apply their knowledge and skills.
Thankfully, there are many great resources available for business education teachers. Depending on the type of materials you prefer using in the classroom, any one of the lesson plans in this article could be a good choice for your learners.
However, knowing how to prepare for an interview is just one of the communication skills students need to get and keep their dream jobs.
To help students become adept in professional communications, consider iCEV. iCEV's comprehensive Professional Communications course includes nearly 40 lessons and 800 projects, activities, and assessments to ensure your CTE students are ready for future career opportunities.
