Typical interview questions: what to prepare for?

In their pure form, such interviews are rare. But the principle by which the candidate is evaluated in each case will help to understand what and why to tell the employer.

What is sure to be asked

Everyone who was looking for work was faced with standard questions. It is easy to prepare answers to them in advance – and for the employer this is the main minus, because many candidates are cunning to please the interviewer. However, these questions are often continued to be used. We talked about such issues in more detail here, below we list short tips.

1. “Tell us about yourself” . There are no secrets here: tell in chronological order how you chose an educational institution and studied, what work experience you gained after, and what personal qualities help you develop. Imagine your experience as a professional story, logical, coherent and short, no longer than three minutes. It’s easy to rehearse at home just in case.
2. “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” Remember the job description. What qualities will help in the performance of this work, and which, on the contrary, will interfere? The Internet is replete with tips on how to answer this question. Recruiters usually laugh that all job seekers, judging by the answers, are terrible workaholics and perfectionists. Try to go against the norm and really name a couple of your weak points. Of course, not one that is incompatible with this work (and if there are any, then this work simply does not suit you). You will be surprised, but often this is what they expect. The ability to evaluate oneself objectively and name your “growth zones” speaks of maturity. Just do not confuse the recognition of individual weaknesses with a listing of all their sins.
3. “What do you see yourself in five years?” The employer does not wait for a reliable answer and will not check in five years. He is interested in something else: what is your desire focused on and what is your ambition. If your goal is a managerial position, and the company is looking for a person for a vacancy without career growth, then this may become a sign for the employer that you will not last long in one place. Or vice versa – they are looking for a very active and in the good sense of the ambitious one who will build a unit from scratch, in which at first you will have to spin alone, and you would just like a calm, stable work.
4. “Why should we take you to this position?” Summarize the above, describe the ideal candidate for the position and find a common between this portrait and your qualities: “If I understand correctly, you are looking for an attentive and responsible secretary. At my last job, I was the only assistant who had never received a fine from accounting for errors in documents. I think I’m perfect for you. ”

Experienced HR specialists over the years of practice develop their own piggy bank of unique questions, which, in their opinion, help to reveal the candidate well. Do not be surprised if you are asked about something that is not directly related to the work – just the interviewer is trying to better understand your motivation and other things important for this vacancy.

Projective interview

In order to better understand the candidate’s personality type and behavior patterns inherent in him, employers ask projective questions: they ask the candidate to express an opinion about people and situations with which he is not connected in any way. The candidate does not need to talk about himself, so he begins to act more freely. But since a person judges events and other people from the point of view of his experience, the interviewer draws useful conclusions from his story.

Projective questions are as follows:

• “Why do people make a career?” The employer is trying to find out about the motives of the candidate, to understand why career growth is important or not important to him.
• “Describe the typical causes of conflict in the team.” From the answer to this question you can learn about the negative experience of the candidate, his ideas about a team that is comfortable and uncomfortable for him.
• “Which client may become problematic for the company?” This is also a question of negative experience, of conflicts that the employee may repeat in the future.
• “Why do some people succeed in life, while others fail?” The answer to the question will tell about how the candidate imagines success: what are his reasons, how to repeat it.

You can return the interviewer from hypothetical situations to reality: “I can’t speak for all people, but it seems to me personally …”

Behavioral Interview

Success and failure at work depend not only on the person himself. The results are influenced by many factors: from the available technical means to the criteria for evaluating labor in a particular organization. There are frequent cases when a successful professional was lured from one company to another, but he could not repeat success in a new place.

To avoid such situations, employers examine a person’s behavior in the previous place – and assess whether a person can become successful in their company. Behavioral interviews have a strict structure and assessment criteria. The interviewee is invited to talk about specific problems and tasks that he solved.

Typically, a behavioral interview is structured as follows:

• What problem did you need to solve?
• What funds did you have?
• Which solution path have you chosen?
• What obstacles did you have to overcome?
• Evaluate the result.

Think in advance about your own successes or failures I would like to tell the potential employer. If possible, gather before the interview figures and facts that will help to talk about it.