Interview questions
Unless you have a crystal ball you’re not going to know what
questions you’ll be asked, but you can have a good guess because
you know what the job is. There’s a big chance that you’ll be asked
some of the following:
About the job
You can break these down and answer them with the following:
-
Your personal interest: how the job matches your career
intentions and what appeals to you about it.
-
experience: the links with experience gained from previous and
current jobs
-
skills you have already which are needed for the job
About your career
-
What are you doing at the moment?
-
What job did you enjoy most/least and why?
-
Why did you leave each job?
-
What are your career plans?
About your skills
-
Which skills are relevant to this job?
-
What extra skills do you have?
-
Which skills do you like most?
-
Which skills are you missing?
If you don’t have a particular skill, show that you’ve got
similar skills and that can easily learn.
About you
Your answers to these questions are the stage of the interview
when you need to draw on what you have picked up about the job and
the company (from your research and from the interview so far). For
example if the interviewer is obviously looking for a team player
then let them know that this is one of your strengths.
When you’re talking about your weaknesses, be honest but be
careful. Don’t say ‘I’m never on time and I’m disorganised’, but
you could say ‘I’m a perfectionist and I like to do things well, it
can sometimes mean that I take a lot of time on things and this is
an area where I could improve’. This is obviously a weakness
because often people need work done quickly but it’s not a bad
thing because you clearly care about your work and like to take the
time to make sure things are right.
When you’re talking about your interests, you need to be up to
date. So, if you’ve said you like reading , be ready to talk about
the book you’re reading now and what you’ve enjoyed most over the
past year. In this part of the interview it may become more like a
conversation, but you still need to be careful – if you give the
impression that you’re out clubbing til 3 each morning, an
interviewer will have doubts about your alertness at work at
9am!