The key strategy is to research the types of qualities and skills set required for the position you have applied.
1. Do all the homework (talk to seniors from your college who gave interview / are working in the company about their interview experience) you can before the interview to uncover this position's wants and needs (not the generalized needs of the industry or company)
2. As early as you can in the interview, ask for a more complete description of what the position entails. You might say: "I have a number of accomplishments I'd like to tell you about, but I want to make the best use of our time together and talk directly to your needs. To help me do, that, could you tell me more about the most important priorities of this position? All I know is what I (heard from the recruiter, read in the job description / classified ad, etc. )" |
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General Questions
More Questions
Stress Questions
Skills / Abilities / Qualifications
Situational behaviour
Self Awareness
Problem Solving and Decision Making
Positions of Responsibility
Interests
General
Education
Career
Administrative Skills
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Don't ask the interviewer What should I tell? or What do you want to know?
Don't take more than a minute or two to complete your answer.
Don't ramble, recap your life story, talking about your ancient history or personal matters. |
Start with the present. Cover your educational background and your family background in brief. One should also include qualities, skills and interests/hobbies relevant to the position you have applied for. Talk about things that you want him to ask further about in any of the above areas. |
What are your greatest strengths?
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Don't fool yourself and them. Be honest. Speak what you FEEL is your greatest strength and be ready with an example to prove your strength. Skills like confidence etc can easily be seen. |
As a general guideline, some of the most desirable traits that all employers want to see in their employees are:
1. A proven track record as an achiever, especially if your achievements match up with the employer's greatest wants and needs. 2. A team player who puts his interests behind the team
3. Dedication - willingness to walk the extra mile to achieve excellence. 4. Definiteness of purpose - clear goals. 5. Enthusiasm - high level of motivation. 6. Good communication skills. 7. Leadership
Be ready with an example to support each of them. |
What are your greatest weaknesses?
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Don't say that I am slow or undecisive or anything which will be clearly unwanted for person in that role. Any admission of a weakness or fault will earn you an award for honesty but you will not get the job. |
Disguise strength as a weakness!
For eg. "I sometimes push my people too hard. I like to work with a sense of urgency and everyone is not always on the same wavelength. " or I sometimes tend to accommodate a little buffer in the deadlines and hence my deadlines are not very aggressive because I like to spend some time and have a close to perfect quality in my work.
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Don't come across as an arrogant and over-confident person. |
Walk through each of the position's requirements as you understand them, and follow each with a reason why you meet that requirement so well. Example: "As I understand your needs, you are first and foremost looking for someone who can manage the sales and marketing of your book publishing division. As you've said you need someone with a strong background in trade book sales. This is where I've focussed during my education. I believe that I know the right methods, principles, and successful management techniques. "
"You also need someone who can expand your book distribution channels. In my organizational experience of events at my college, my innovative promotional ideas doubled the sponsorship for the fest compared to the previous year. I'm confident I can do the same for you. "
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Why do you think you should be taken for this job in comparison to your college friends who have applied for the same position?
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Don't go on to talk about your friends in any manner which could be offensive about your friends because this is precisely what the employer wants to check. |
Go on to talk about yourself, your achievements and qualities. Finally put the ball in the employer's court by saying that he is the better person to decide who is to be chosen for the job. |
Where do you see yourself five years from now?
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Don't sound like you're settling for this position, using it merely as a stopover until something better comes along.
Don't say that you do not have a job and you have to compromise. |
Reassure your interviewer that you're looking to a bright -future in the company in the coming 4-5 years and the position entails what you're looking to do and what you do well. As for your future, you believe that if you perform each job at hand with excellence, future opportunities will take care of themselves.
Example: "I am definitely interested in growing personally with the company in the coming years. Judging by what you've told me about this position, it's what I'm looking for and what I am well qualified to do. In terms of my future career path, I'm confident that if I do my work with excellence, opportunities will surely open up for me. It's always been that way in my career, and I'm confident I'll have similar opportunities here. "
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Describe your ideal company and job.
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Don't name a company or show that you are compromising in taking up this opportunity even if that is the case. |
The only right answer is to describe something similar to what this company is offering, being sure to make your answer believable with specific reasons, stated with sincerity, why each quality represented by this opportunity is attractive to you. You may say that you would like to work in any company which is growing and which can provide you also the opportunity to grow in the role. |
Why do you want to work at our company?
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Don't say, I don't have a job and if you provide me the job I would be willing to work at your company. |
You should reiterate on all the good attributes about the company in terms of your role offered, what you may have heard about the culture in the company, its name, its growth and how it all fits your expectations |
Tell me about something you tried and failed to do ?
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Don't talk about your guilt from personal life or career or regrets regarding a parent, spouse, child etc. All such answers can be disastrous. DO NOT express regret. |
Talk about something you tried and failed to do. Do talk about what you learnt from it. You can say that you never regret because every failure makes you a better person if we make sure we don't repeat the mistake. |
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When you get this silent treatment after answering, a particularly difficult question, such as "tell me about your weaknesses", its intimidating effect can be most disquieting, even to polished job hunters.
Most unprepared candidates rush in to fill the silence, viewing prolonged, uncomfortable silences as an invitation to clear up the previous answer which has probably caused the interviewer to think. |
If your interviewer is silent for quite sometime, keep quiet yourself for a while, do not disturb if he is writing something and ask after sometime, with sincere politeness and not a trace of sarcasm, "Is there anything else I can fill in on that point?" Just wait calmly for him to talk after that.
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Tell me about a situation when your work was criticized
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Don't say that you were criticized at some point and those who did it were stupid and you were not at fault. |
This question is also intended to probe how well you accept criticism.
You may say that no one is perfect and you always welcome suggestions on how to improve your performance. Then, give an example of a not-too-damaging experience of criticism from your college life and relate the way you accepted your fault and how it has helped you. This demonstrates that you learned from the experience. Of course, the example has to be related to your studies or related activity and not your personal life. |
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Don't say that you hobyy is sleeping and that is what you are best at. This kind of humor will not be taken in a positive light.
You are going to be hired for what you can do for the company and not for yourself and family, hence a long list would only make him disinterested. Mentioning cooking, gardening, listening to music also are not good examples as they do not put you across as an active person.
When you quote an activity as your hobby, you are likely to be asked another question like When was the last time you painted/played ? . So don't quote anything that you haven't done for a long time. If you like something, you better be doing it at a reasonable frequency. |
Mention things which may relate to the employer or perhaps the profile you're appearing for. Telling him about the desire to read or indulging in sports on weekends so that so that the employer is comfortable in having you in his company. You should talk about interests which are oriented towards something which makes you active and participatory. |
Who has inspired you in your life and why?
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Avoid the personalities that could create a problem even from a distance unless you can justify it well. Also take care to choose the best of the lot. |
You may mention anyone from your life who's been there as a protangonist or perhaps someone of a higher genre from a public profile. You also need to mention as to what are the qualities that you like in that person and how have those things influenced your personality.
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Give me an example of your creativity (analytical skills, managing ability, etc. )
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Don't mention things from the distant past as that will only make the employer think that you've havent employed your recent time well. |
Give creative examples of how you put in your efforts to some project or with peers to bring out something substantial. You can quote examples where you took a new approach to solve any problem in your academic life preferably. |
What was the toughest challenge you have ever faced?
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Don't include your personal or family issue coming along since this is the last thing recruiter wants.
Avoid being emotional in such a situation and be confident to answer it well. |
You may mention a situation where you found yourself alone yet you took it as a challenge to yield out the results. Such a situation could be in the form of academics or some event organization or perhaps any of your real life situations. But maintain decorum to avoid mentioning personal issues. |
What do you like most and hate most?
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Abstain from making any judgements about someone in particular but you could express your feelings of hate about a methodology. For eg you could mention that you hate dishonesty but not that you hate your xyz friend because he lied the other day.
Also try to keep the extent level to disliking rather than hating as much as possible to avoid giving a provocative image. |
Mention things which may relate to your domain or perhaps the profile you're appearing for, along with other things you find your interest into. Mentioning things which are subtle would be better. You can also mention some qualities like dishonesty or compromise on quality of job. Say what you mean. |
What do you think will be the challenge in handling this job?
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Don't say that there is nothing that could prove out to be challenge to you because if there isnt such a thing then it makes no sense to take up the job. |
Mention the challenges that you can visualize in your domain, like for a researcher it is difficult to precisely search for certain content on the internet but he still wants to do it. Just as importantly also mention your capabilities to cope up with such a challenge. Top
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Describe one situtation where you have demonstrated being a teamplayer
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Don't sound like a hero but like a modest person, who put's team's interest before himself |
Demonstrate your presence as a team player both where what you suggested something was taken up by the team and also where you didn't quite agree with an idea. Even If the decision was not what you expected, you still came out and supported your team members to meet the objectives. You can also mention an incident when you compromised your interests or activities to support your team. |
Describe one situtation where you have demonstrated leadership
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Avoid mentioning any incidence where you came out as a leader and you thought that your idea was right but could never be proved. It may happen that you end up spending the next hour convincing the interviewer that you were right when he's already convinced that you weren't. |
To come up with a situation where you were against the odds but proved your point to the extent of convincing others, would definitely work in your favour. Try to come up with recent events that you may have shown your skills at instead of ones in distant past. |
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Don't come across as an arrogant person to mention that you didn't really care about the exams at the first place. Simply quoting your irrelevant extracurricular activities without any achievement/experience will not help. |
You may just mention honestly that you've been an average student but at this point mention to the interviewer about your other skills which may make him think you're eligible for the job. This showcases the need to be good at extracurricular activities besides scoring good at studies. A possible answer - I have a keen interest in computers and programming. Having spent a significant time in these interests, I have become good at many programming languages. I have also been the System administrator of my hostel, which has given me a good experience in computer networks, server maintenance etc.
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