Advice: Prepare Answers to These Questions /Interviewing
Tell me about yourself (elevator speech 2-3 minutes)
Why are you interested in this position?
How is your experience aligned with our needs?
Tell me about a time you felt most satisfied with your organizational skills on the job.
Tell me about a time when you helped someone else solve a troublesome situation.
Tell me about the most challenging position you have been involved with.
Give me an example of a time when you put in extra effort to get the job done.
Tell me about a time when you used your problem solving skills.
Tell me about the best meeting you ever conducted.
Tell me about a time you had to make a decision and all the facts were not available.
What do you consider to be your greatest achievement and why?
How would you use your strengths in carrying out the duties and responsibilities of this position?
Eye Contact
Eye contact should be natural as with any conversation with another person. Avoid looking down at your shoes, out the window or up at the ceiling. You could be missing some important clues from the interviewer's body language. Failing to maintain natural eye contact will be read as a sign that you are not interested or are too shy to handle a job that requires working effectively with others. Look alert and listen.
Rehearse the questions you will ask of the interviewer.
Ask questions! It shows your interest. The best questions are about the job and the company, but may include questions about expectations, travel and other related areas. Try asking them in different ways, just as you are practicing different ways to answer questions.
Never talk to an interviewer about personal problems. Your problems will weaken your case. You also do not ever want to hear about the interviewer's personal problems that would be embarrassing for you to know if you were hired. Steer clear of any personal chit chat and bring the conversation back to problems in the organization that you are prepared to solve.
Avoid premature salary discussions. Don't talk money until you have established your value and the company offers you the job. Salary and benefits can be negotiated at an appropriate time.
Always protect the confidence of a past employer, and be understanding of any difficulties the employer may have had, including those which caused you to leave. You may be talking to your future employer, and you are demonstrating how much consideration you will show him should problems arise.
Informational interviewing can be one of the most useful career planning or job marketing tools that are available to you. The following "rules" should be used:
- Do your homework prior to the interview. Know what you need to find out.
- Write out the questions that you will want to ask. Time is at a premium in this situation and you want to use it to your fullest and you want to appear professional. Unfocused and vague questions do not produce the kind of information you need or leave the impression you want.
- Don't say, "The work you do sounds interesting. Can you tell me something about it and what it is like?" Instead, ask the following:
- What are the critical skills needed in this type of work?
- What are some of the major problems or issues that someone in your field or position faces?
- Are there professional associations, journals, or magazines that might help me learn more about this field? Which ones would you recommend?
- Are there any courses that might be particularly helpful?
- Given my background, what do you think an employer's reservations might be in hiring me for a position in this area? Or, Given my background, what do you think I need to do to become competitive for a job in this field?
- During my job research I have run across this term and I really don't understand what ______ means. Can you explain it to me?
- What are the major responsibilities of your position? What do you like and what do you not like?
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