Odd Ball Interview Questions

“How do you get an elephant to fit inside a mini car?”

For oddball questions, as with all the interview questions, you need to practice and prepare your answers.

The only way to prepare for unknown and often quite random questions is by asking someone to through random questions at you.

Not all interviewers ask these questions.

Interviewers ask questions that are relevant to the position you are applying for, the question “How do you get an elephant to fit inside a mini car?” can be answered from the perspective of an engineer or from a creative perspective.

Employers want to check if you can think outside the box, problem solves, creatively think or analyse information which is why they ask these, which often seem random but are in fact skilled based interview questions

· Why are manhole cover round?

· If you were shrunk to the size of a pea and put in a jug how would you escape?

· Given the numbers 1 to 100, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number when playing “higher” or “lower”

April 4, 2013

The 3 Rules for Completing Job Application Forms and Personal Profiles

For each position you apply for you will receive a job specification, to secure a job offer you need evidence that you possess the essential criteria required for this job role.

To highlight your skills you need to record real working examples of the essential criteria, (in the personal profile and employment history section). The applicant who possesses all the essential criteria is offered the job interview.

Rule One – Stand Out

Most applicants will have the required qualifications and experiences which is why they have applied for this position, what you need to do is stand out from the crowd. To stand out you need to highlight on the application form what unique value you can offer IE what skill or quality do you possess that will increase company profit, turnover or production, etc?

By having a unique skill or selling point, will add value to the organisation you are applying to, as an example if you have a gift for turning underperforming companies on the brink of bankruptcy into a profitable business, then a company in this situation can’t afford to lose you.

Rule Two – Personal Information

The first section on the job application is simple; add your contact details, past employment history (give a brief summary only here of your role and duties, making them relevant to the job role) and your qualifications. Ensure you follow the application form rules and if required write using a black pen, etc. One important aspect of the application form is the position you are applying for and the job code boxes, because large businesses recruit hundreds of people a year and HR will only know the position you have applied for by this important code.

Rule Three – The Profile is King

The key to securing job interviews is the application form profile as this is the section that will confirm you have the required essential criteria, while you sell yourself through your unique selling point (making you stand out from the crowd)

The job specifications that accompany the job application form tells you in detail, what requirements the employer is looking to be evidenced on the job application form and the importance the employer places on each criteria.

The job criteria will be recorded under either desirable or essential criteria – it is a must that you have all the essential criteria and most or all of the desirable criteria. It’s even simpler then that, the employer on the job specification will also tell you where they will measure this criterion which either via the application form or the job interview.

If you need to add additional pages to the application form, add them and make a note (and give a reference number to each individual page) in the application form so an employer does not miss this vital information. But as more application forms become available online extra pages are not required as text box will in-large itself – just beware of any word count limits.

Use headings to split up your text on the profile; the essential criteria requirements make the best headings.
Start with an opening paragraph; a mini summary that can highlight your best strengths and skills in 4-5 lines, ensuring you highlight your unique selling point. The opening paragraph must intrigue the employer, encouraging them to read your statement in more detail.
At the end of the personal statement, write a brief summary why you have applied for this role, what has made you pick this particular role and/or organisation?

Additional Applications

To save time on future online application forms, keep a copy of your completed application form as a draft copy and use this as the basis of all your future job application forms. When writing a new application form, copy and paste the statement from your original application into your new one, edit each new application/profile to make it relevant to this new position and company, this will save you a large amount of time.

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April 1, 2013August 8, 2015

Coaching Business in a Box

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3 Key Facts That Every Coach Needs to Know

Internet is King: You will only survive in this competitive field if you have a good internet presence
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Before you Think about Buying this Package, first you need to know – What you will receive?

Business Start Up E-Book Was £59.99

Understand how to turn Life Coaching in to a well paid Business
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Understand the coaching regulations that govern this industry
How to take payments online securely and cheaply

Google Destroyer E-Book Was £79.99

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A successful Life armed with a list of techniques and an in-depth understanding of internet marketing can make hundreds, even thousands of pounds a day. Coaches often charged between £50-£180 per session. Expert coaches will often charge £300-£400 per session, and I will add this package will teach you how to become an expert coach quickly helping you increase your fees, making you more money and more successful.

Did You Know?

Most clients will book 4-5 coaching sessions with you ( X Sessions by Cost per Session = Profit)
Satisfied clients will often refer two friends, who once satisfied will also refer tow friends ( 3 Clients x 2 Referrals Each = 6 New Clients)
Coaches make 50% of their profits from selling becoming an affiliate or selling e-products on their websites, YES this means they make hundreds of pounds without having to lift a finger (by adding an affiliate banner to your website, you can earn 50% of a £2000 course)

Depending on the stage of your coaching business you can Buy one of 3 packages

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ü Ideal for life coaches who already have a coaching business, but you struggle to get paying clients and you have a limited knowledge of coaching techniques; you will learn how to get more client referrals, you will increase your paid starts which can only lead to an increase in your profits and you increase your knowledge of coaching techniques

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Full Breakdown

Content	Bronze	Silver	Gold
Business Start Up E-book	Y	Y	Y
Google Destroyer E-book	Y	Y	Y
The Expert Coach E-book	Y	Y	Y
101 Coaching Sessions	Y	Y	Y
101 Coaching Questions	Y	Y	Y
12 Skype Coaching Sessions with Chris Delaney			Y
A word press coaching website URL		Y	Y
Website Content			Y
12 month Unlimited e-mail with Chris Delaney		Y	Y
5 Coaching Blog Articles		Y	Y
Coaching E-book that you can sell to your customers			Y
Paypal Embedded into Your Site			Y
Total Cost	£199	£699	£2499
Today’s Price	£99	£349	£1249
You Have Saved	£100	£350	£1250

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March 28, 2013

Does Your On-line Story Affect Your Interview

Your online story creates your personal brand. We are all aware that the interview is designed for the interviewee to sell your unique selling point, but in this digital age the employer has the advantage of checking your story online.

You may at the interview create a professional persona, impressing the interviewer. The interviewer, ready to offer you the position, makes one final online check only to fine your face book page full of photos of you out drinking and partying and your status updates recording how you feel to hung-over to go into work today.

With this in mind the digital job hunter can support their cause by creating an online brand. Your online brand can be the difference between a high salary job offer and the unemployment line, imagine your unique selling point is writing winning tenders on a contractual basis.

The employer investigating you online, finds your linked-in profile recording the extensive list of recognised employers you have successfully worked for, twitter updates stating the bids and tenders you have won, showing a timeline of your work and your face book wall creates a professional image of you with updates about your charity work and online references from happy customers and employers.

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March 28, 2013December 18, 2020

How to Answer The Interview Question Do You Consider Yourself Successful

A number of employers ask interview questions based on ‘success.’

Success is ambiguous, as each person views success differently. A young career professional may feel successful as they were the first in their family to attend higher education, but a second candidate who grew up in a household where education was deemed as the norm, may not view attending university as a success.

The underpinning objective for the ‘do you consider yourself successful? interview question is more about achievement and the journey to that achievement.

The frame of the interview answer should be one of a hardship the candidate has overcome.

Therefore, the interviewee, to score a high scoring interview answer needs to set out a problem, show planning and how they overcome difficulties and what it was they achieved.

A single parent, as an example, may talk about balancing a family, and a job while studying for a master’s with an open university course. The parent could then go on to discuss additional difficulties; maybe the child became ill or the employer had to make staff cuts.

The ‘difficulties’ is one way to show personality, work ethic and determination. Did the difficulties allow the parent to give up? Or did they grit their teeth determined to be a success?

How to answer the ‘success’ job interview question.

As everyone succeeded in something, this could be finishing school to climbing Everest, the initial answer should be a responding ‘Yes I have been successful….’

Next, state ‘…one example is…’ The ‘one’ example infers there are many other successes.

To answer the question follow these 4 steps:

Set the goal – to finish a master’s, become a world champion, to set up a part-time business.
Explain the current barriers; being a single parent, stating a disability, how everyone said you current achieve this goal
Through in additional difficulties – talk about the journey, how you were on track to be successful and then…a ‘difficulty’ happened.
Conclude. End the story by stating the success, but more importantly, what you learned about yourself along the way

Example Interview Answer.

“Yes, I would say I am successful. One example of being successful was when I set myself a goal to move into this job sector.

I had left school with no GCSEs and came from a family that didn’t encourage attending higher education – they believed that instead of spending money on education, everyone should find work.

Once I had committed to this career goal I created a careers plan, stating what qualification I needed to gain and enrolled in nigh school, initially gaining my GCSEs and then an access course for nursing.

It was half-way through my access to the nursing course when my father became ill. As an only child whose mother had passed away many years previously, it came down to me to be the carer for my father.

This took up a large amount of time, and my initial thought was that I should quit the course. But, because I am passionate about the profession I knew I had to plan better and manage my time to ensure I could be there for my father while having enough time to spend on my course.

Some of my friends were nurses and they use to tell me how busy they always were, having to do extra shifts and work long hours. So I imagine that caring for my father while studying was my job. This helped me frame it in the right way to stay motivated.

What I learned about myself is that I have self-determination. even when there is a problem I can knuckle down and get the job done.”

March 20, 2013January 1, 2021

How to Answer The Interview Question How Long Are You Planning to Stay With Our Organisation?

Employers spend around 33% of their profits on recruitment and will prefer to employ an applicant who will stay with the company for at least 2-3 years.

In reality, an employer will never really know what will happen in the future and how long an employee will work for one organisation. So why ask the ‘duration’ job interview question?

In most cases, an employer will only ask how long an applicant is likely to stay working for them – sometimes framed as the interview question ‘how long have you worked for your previous organisations?’ because the employer has experienced a high turnover of staff.

This interview question is common with contract work, project work, and for low paid or low skilled roles.

How to answer the interview question.

The interviewer with the ‘how long do you plan on staying with our company?’ interveiw question is concerned with staff retention.

Therefore the interveiw answer must reassure the employer to score high marks as part of a structured job interview.

How to reassure the interviewer.

One way to reassure the interviewer, to score high on the interview scorecard, is to explain how you have researched their organisation including the values and the company vision, or how you know friends who are employees of the company and who talk positively about the company culture, which has resulted in you wanting to make a career out of working for this particular company.

What you are doing with this interveiw tactic is saying – ‘I don’t just want any job, I want a career with your company.’

Another similar approach is the ‘matching’ technique. Here an applicant can talk about their personal values, what motivates them as an individual and which type of environment they work well in. And matching this to what the interviewer stated at the interview start (In most job interviews, the interviewer will kick off the job interview by discussing the job role, the team and the company culture)

Here you are showing how this organisation is the ideal workplace for your temperament.

A final interview technique is to express dislike.

This approach may sound dangerous, but in fact, it has the opposite result – desire.

When asked about duration, the interviewee can talk about how they dislike job hunting, moving from one company to the next having to learn new processes and procedures, and how they only applied for this role as it is their preferred employer.

Applicants can evidence how they are loyal to a company by explaining how they have worked for their previous employer for the past 10-20 or 30 years.

This approach is saying if you recruit me I will be a loyal employee.

March 17, 2013January 13, 2021

How to Answer The Interview Question Tell Me About a Suggestion You Have Made

More and more, organisations are looking for employees to share ideas, suggestions, to be innovative and creative, due to the fast-paced changes within job sectors created by globalization, new entries and technology.

When asked an interveiw question on ‘suggestions’ you will know that this organisation is forward-thinking.

This question also tells you the company is looking for team players and creative people.

Use a real-life example of when you put a suggestion forward, the situation, how the idea developed and the outcome.

Answering ‘suggestion’ Interveiw Questions.

Situation – initially start the interveiw question by describing the problem the company was facing.

This could be, as an example, a new product from a competitor that was going to reduce company income in your organisation. Or how global events were affecting sales or production.

Developed – next explain your process for finding a solution (the suggestion you took to an employer) Use detail here; talk about two different ideas and how you looked at the opportunities and threats for each option.

Talk about any research you undertook or challenges you faced. SHow that it wasn’t just a lightbulb moment and that you thought about the suggestion or idea.

Outcome – end with the positive outcome, how the idea was initially tested and then implemented, and how the idea helped the company financially.

Example Answers

“In my previous company, the management team was asked to suggest ideas how we could break a new policy to the workforce, that long term would save jobs but the short term could potentially upset some of the workforces. Having had previous experience in change management I knew change management theories that could be easily administered. With the orgnasiation being a smaller family-run company with no experience of change management, I went away a created a project plan including a comms and risk plan. The whole project was detailed out with step by step guides on how to implement the changes. The manager was really impressed with the detail and research and implemented the project plan that resulted in a smooth change with no staff losses or grievances.”

March 17, 2013

How To Answer The Interview Question Why Did You Leave Your Last Job?

How to Answer The Interview Question Why Did You Leave Your Last Job?

A dreaded question for many! When answering this question never give a negative answer. “I did not get on with my manager” or “The management did not run the business well” will show you in a negative light and reduce your chance of a job offer. Answer the question positively, emphasising that

you have been looking for a career progression. Start by telling the interviewer what you gained from your last job

“I enjoyed my last job, I quickly learned how to multi-task and prioritise work and over the last 3 years I have seen myself grow. I am now ready to take the next step up the ladder with my career and feel I would suit working for company such as this”

If you were made redundant, let the interviewer know, this is not a negative!

This is an extract from the Interview E-Book “Tricky Questions, Killer Answers – over 50 interview questions and answers”

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March 17, 2013

How To Answer The Interview Question What Experience Do You Have In This Field?

How to Answer The Interview Question What Experience Do You Have In This Field?

For this question you first need to read and understand the job specification, as this will tell you what experience the interviewer is looking for. Your answer should relate your experience and achievements to that of the job role. Often interviewees will talk about experiences that are not relevant to the job role, this will only lead to the employer becoming uninterested in you.

“I have over 6 years experience as a nursery nurse, in that time I have gain an NVQ Level 2 and 3 in child care. I have worked with children of all ages including groups of children with disabilities. I understand the importance of “health and safety” and “every child matters” and use my creative skills to organise games and activities to teach young children new skills while keeping them entertained. Recently I also won an award for employee of the year”

This is an extract from the Interview E-Book “Tricky Questions, Killer Answers – over 50 interview questions and answers”

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March 17, 2013November 12, 2020

How To Answer The Interview Question Why Did You Leave Your Last Job

How to Answer The Interview Question ‘Why Did You Leave Your Last Job?’

Lets start with some basics:

Be positive with this answer and smile –

Why smile? Research show’s that smiling increases likeability and likeability, in a job interview, increasing interview scores.

Why Positive? Employers like to hear that you left for a good opportunity or reason, a chance to do something special or for a good career move.

Interview Question Structure:

Start the answer with a look back
Explain what you enjoyed about your previous role
Give a Positive reason for leaving

Interview Answer Example:

“I enjoyed working at Company Name and really enjoyed the interaction of working with a wide range of individuals-I feel I gained a lot of transferable skills from this experience, which I can use in this role. It was a hard choice to leave but I felt that this great opportunity is the next obvious step for me”