Tag: pass the job interview

Posted on

How to Answer the Job Interview Question Tell me about the most fun you have had at work

Interview questions are asked to uncover a particular skill, quality or experience from the interviewee. The reason why many job applicants fail during the job interview is that they don’t understand what it is the interviewer wants to hear.

Interview Question Tell me about the most fun you have had at work

This question can sometimes catch some people out, explain the good feeling you get when you and your team have achieved or accomplished a goal.

Example Interview Answer

“Recently, my team has been working on a project; we had a large amount of work to do. It was all worth it, as we achieved our goal and we were all really happy with the result.”

Posted on

How to Answer the Job Interview Question Do you think you have enough experience?

Do you think you have enough experience?

Explanation of the  Interview Question:

If you’re asked this, then the interviewer does not believe you have enough experience.

If you have you need to make this clear, explain about your previous experiences and give detail to the parts that are relevant to this new job role.

If you do not have the experience they need, you need to show the employer you have the skills, qualities and knowledge that will make you equal to people with experience but not necessary the skills. It is also good to add how quick you can pick up the routine of a new job role.

Example Interview Answer

“Altogether I have 8 years experience in this industry, in my current role as a manager I spend a large amount of time auditing accounts as we worked on government contracts and all expenditure had to be accounted for.

I use all the relevant computer packages and understand the importance of double-checking the figures. I have always had an eye for detail and an ability to find errors easily, allowing me to be pro-active rather than reactive” 

Posted on

How to Answer the Interview Question What kind of person would you refuse to work with?

How to Answer the Interview Question What kind of person would you refuse to work with?

Explanation of the Question:

Start by explaining how you get on well with everyone, and then stop to think. Carry on by saying you would not want to work with someone who was violent or someone who was lazy.

Example Interview Answer

“I always get on well everyone I meet, I am often told how friendly and approachable I am. I like to give everyone a chance but I wouldn’t like to work with someone who is violent or lazy”

Posted on

How to Answer the Interview Question What are you looking for in a job?

How to Answer the Interview Question “What are you looking for in a job?”

Explanation of the Question:

Think about the main job duties, skills and qualities needed for this position, which of these would you enjoy?

Job Satisfaction, Team Work, Variety, Seeing the end result from your work, Helping others, Etc.

This way you are being honest while discussing relevant duties and qualities. Don’t say the obvious:

Example Interview Answer

 “This job” As you will quickly lose credibility and the interviewer may doubt other answers to the interview questions.

“It’s important for me to see the end result from my work; I like to know that I have done a good job and that my customers are satisfied”

Posted on

Not Your Average Interview Techniques

This month’s guest post comes from James Harlan; an aspiring novelist and a young community leader.  He promotes lifelong learning and academic success through his contributions in the blogs, Master Dissertations and Oxbridge Dissertation.

Engaging in an interview is part and parcel of joining a company.

It is an essential screening measure that has been used for years.  And while interviewers subscribe to methodical interview guidelines, applicants continue to struggle to effectively nail it down.

Why is that?

There are various factors at play.  Listing all of them will not only take pages; it might also divert you from the obvious objective of this one-piece – which is to provide interesting approaches for amelioration.

And to provide better insight, some instances will be proffered under the perspective of an applicant vying for a freelance writing job.

Hone on interesting titbits

Have you noticed how easy it is for the interviewer to throw you unaware? The interviewer almost always possesses the upper hand – but that doesn’t mean you can’t do the same. Okay, before the technique is introduced, subscribe to this reminder: you are not to perform this to retaliate. Instead, perform this approach to show how in-depth your research had been.

1. Conduct an investigation with your eye on tricky issues. You can catch its whiff through an acquaintance who’s already working for the said company or through underground job forums.

2. Bring it out in your interview by politely asking about it. You can’t just ask for simple clarifications. Your best bet for a favourable response from your interviewer is by asking it in connection to the post you’re applying for (e.g., freelance business writer).

3. Express your satisfaction with the answer. And if you’re not really satisfied, feign contentment. There’s a reason why your interviewer is not giving it all. Pry more and your application might end up slouching in the nearby trash bin.

Bounce back with a bang

Perhaps, you’re the kind of applicant who gets real slumped when shoved down with heavy, out-of-this-world interview questions.

You obviously have a lot to work on your recovery techniques. Recovery techniques are methods that increase your chances of bouncing back from an unexpected interview question. It consists of the following:

  • Laughing at it. A good hearty laugh produces the effect of taking away the aggravating tinge of nervousness.
  • Repeating what was asked. Don’t be afraid to sound redundant. You are not repeating the question to mimic parrots; you are doing so to confirm the question – what it means to ask.
  • Make a joke out of it. This applies for unexpected interview questions that aren’t characteristically funny (e.g., “this is your very first time to opt for freelance writing?”). Jokes give a good reason to laugh, fan the panicky feeling away, and allows you to go back to striking it.

Pullout your tricks

Did you always want to do something a little bit crazy than usual? List them all and pick the ones you could really muster to do during an interview. The following entries are just a few examples:

  • Wear a coloured, chequered, or cartoon-themed socks or ties.
  • Take with you an interesting toy (e.g., miniature toy).
  • Bring a thickset and ancient-looking book.

For prospective freelance writers, you can sport an ‘I love Shakespeare’ shirt, or something of a similar ilk. Bring out your inner childlike creativity. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of crazy – as long as it doesn’t interfere with your job interview.

About the Author: James Harlan is an aspiring novelist and a young community leader. He promotes lifelong learning and academic success through his contributions in the blogs, Master Dissertations and Oxbridge Dissertation. You can connect with him on Twitter @c_jvinson.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.”

Posted on

How to Answer the “How are you feeling” Interview Question

“How are you feeling” Interview Question – the best approach to answer this interview question

Many interviewers will ask some mundane questions at the interview start, to get you talking and relaxing.

Many job applicants will answer these questions with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer, without realizing that they are missing out on a chance to influence the interviewer. This isn’t a closed question and shouldn’t be answered with a one-word reply.

A common opening question is “how are you feeling?” most applicants will say “a little nervous..” but to influence the interview you can edit the example answer below to make it relevant to your own experience and job sector

What is different about the answer below is that the answer is full of hypnotic persuasion techniques to help build rapport with the employer.

“I feel really excited about being here today, I don’t know if you want to recruit someone like me with a qualification in X or experience in Y, but you will want to hire someone with my enthusiasm as I am often told by previous bosses “that I’m a dedicated worker who go’s above and beyond the call of duty” for me, I don’t see what I do as going above and beyond I just enjoy what I do and I want to use my enthusiasm and experience to collaborate with success with you and your team”

If you can’t see the hypnotic patterns then you will want to buy the influencing the interview book from Amazon today. For now I have highlighted a few of the hypnotic patterns below.

I haven’t got the time to explain which pattern is what or how to use your voice to package the hypnotic commands, but the book – influencing the interview will explain everything you need to know.

 

“I feel really excited about being here today, I don’t know if you want to recruit someone like me with a qualification in X or experience in Y, but you will want to hire someone with my enthusiasm as I am often told by previous bosses “that I’m a dedicated worker who goes above and beyond the call of duty” for me, I don’t see what I do as going above and beyond I just enjoy what I do and I want to use my enthusiasm and experience to collaborate with success with you and your team”

If you enjoyed this article you will also enjoy reading:

 

Posted on

Ten Stupid Ways to Fail Your Job Interview

Ten Stupid Ways to Fail Your Job Interview

After weeks of job hunting and searching through thousands of job vacancies, editing your CV for each individual job and writing targeted covering letters you finally land the all-important interview for your dream job. Don’t mess up your job interview by making these 10 stupid mistakes that will ensure you fail your job interview.

1. Farting During the Interview

We all get nervous during job interviews including celebrities and even the wife of ex-presidents. Hilary Clinton during an interview didn’t realise how sensitive her microphone was when she accidentally farted during her TV interview – we don’t know if this embarrassing mistake was due to a bad diet or bad nerves

2. Telling Big Fat Lies

Job hunters often stretch the truth during job interviews to gain the upper hand over other job applicants, but Callie Armstrong took it one step too far when she lied at about being Jewish and being able to speak Hebrew! It paid off though as she was not only offered a job but a year later married one of the Jewish graduates from the school where she secured work, which meant she had to convert to Judaism. But when did she tell the groom about the lie, before or after the wedding?

3. Agreeing with everything the interview says even the Lie’s on your CV

Jen from the IT Crowd got stuck after lying on her CV about her IT skills and was offered the IT management job. Explaining later during to the interviewer “I’ve got a lot of experience with the computer…thing, you know e-mails…, sending e-mails, receiving e-mails,…deleting e-mails, I could go on…”

4. Using an Over Creative Video CV

You need your CV or Resume to stand out from the crowd, but Barny from How I Met Your Mother took this a little to far as you see him flying airplanes, driving monster trucks and parachuting off cliffs to the soundtrack “I’m so Awesome”

5. Arriving to the Job Interview with a Cockatoo on Your Shoulder

Some job hunters really don’t understand the importance of the first impression, especially one guy who attended a job interview with a cockatoo on his shoulder. Robert Half completed a recent survey on outstanding interview mistakes and outrageous interview blunders

6. Wearing your PJ’s to the Interview

According to a recent survey of more than 670 HR managers, many job hunters don’t understand the importance of wearing smart attire during the interview, with some interviewees arriving at the interview dressed in their nightwear, thankfully this was PJs and slippers and not boxer shorts and socks

 

7. Giving Joke Answers to Serious Questions

Some interviewers want to stand out from the crowd, instead of asking about your experience, qualifications or what can you bring to the organisation? They will ask dumb questions such as “if you were a cookie what cookie would you be?” don’t get caught out by thinking this is a joke question responding with a joke answer such as a “A smart cookie” read more about dumb interview questions and answers on the link below

8. Not Thinking About your Interview Answers

I love hearing funny responses to interview questions, some interviewees are so nervous during the Q&A section of the interview that they respond to interview questions with the first thought that pops into their head; one guy was asked “why do you want to work here” and responded with “because I fancy the girl in reception” another applicant in a sales interview was asked how he would handle a difficult client? He told the interviewer he had the perfect solution – wrestle his clients to the ground instead of trying to work out any differences.

9. Don’t Go To an Interview Drunk

No matter what you do wrong to prepare for an interview don’t go out drinking until 5 in the morning before your job interview as “the speakman” can confirm that no matter how many cups of coffee you drink you will still feel absolutely hammered. This unlucky guy not only had to attend a face to face interview while drunk, but had to complete a number of IQ and maths test that lasted all day. With an oncoming hangover, the interviewee was secretly hoping he would fail each stage of the interview process so he could grab a quick taxi home and straight to bed, but luckily or unluckily he passed each stage of the interview process even though his breath smelt of kebab and his stomach felt like it was ready to explode

10. Don’t get Arrested During the Job Interview

One sure way to guarantee you don’t receive a job offer during a job interview is when you get arrested for murder between answering questions. An unnamed girl accused of murdering two young men, was wanted by police who could not locate her, but they knew that the girl had a job interview due and waited for the girl to attend the job interview before arresting her – to the surprise of the interviewees

You can fail your job interview in many stupid ways with most popular way being, interviewees not practicing the interview questions. You can now learn the Killer Answers to Tricky Questions.

If you enjoyed reading this article you will also enjoy reading:

Posted on

Structuring Your Interview Answers

Once you receive your Interview Invitation, you still have work to do, the first being to practice answering tricky interview questions. T

o do this you need to know what type of interview questions you will be asked, you can read 101 Interview Questions and I would add what is even more important  then knowing the interview questions is knowing how to structure your interview answer.

To gain an insight into the specific question you will be asked, re-read the job specification that came with your job application pack.

All the Essential Skills, Knowledge and Experiences on the job specification will be turn into interview questions this is because the employer feels that their new employee needs the required knowledge or experiences to fit in at the level the company is operating at.

The key to passing job interviews is Communication, the employer needs to understand what you are trying to communicate to them; communication is not about what you are saying, it’s about what the other person interprets what you are saying which means you need to structure you interview answer in such a way that employer has no doubt you can do the specific part of the job that the interview question related to.

Answering Interview Questions

You may be asked direct interview questions; what, where, why, who or competency-based questions; give me an example, describe a time when you, summaries your previous role and duties

It’s not about the type of question you are asked it’s about how you structure your answer which means you need to know how to answer interview questions.

I would add you need your answer to come across loud and clear by delivering 3 key pieces of information per answer, any more then this can confuse the interviewers mind, as the brain can find it hard to remember a large amount of information in one go.

Start by answering the question in the first sentence                      

Q: Are you a good team player?

A: Yes I am a good team player, in my last position I worked in team environment throughout the project…

Q: What is your knowledge of diversity and equal opportunities regulations?

A: I possess a deep understanding of diversity and equal opportunity regulations; I find it really important to keep unto date with changes to regulations…

Q: Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?

A: I am really keen to turn this position into a career, in 5 years time I will have a full understanding of the job sector and will be applying for a promotion within this organisation.

Q: Describe a situation where you dealt with an angry customer.

A: In my last position I would work on the complaints department every Monday and would often come across “angry” customers; I was always able to quickly calm customers down and resolve their issues by…

Next, add a little more detail – this should intrigue the employer and hit several of the job specifications essential criteria

  • Give an overview of the situation – In many cases this is done when you answer the question in your first sentence.
  • Explain any “problems” or “barriers” you had to face and overcome “the company had never had a contract like this before” “sales had started to drop, so the manger asked me to join the team..”
  • Explain what YOU did “I was responsible for..” “I took initiative..” “it was my idea to…”
  • Explain the positive outcome from your actions; where possible quote figures and percentages or give third-person feedback “this led to an increase in sales by 35%” “the team manager fed back that this resulted in an increase in company shares”

Finally, summaries by referring back to the question (this can also come across as you thinking of your answer on the spot, not using a prepared answer)

  • “Does that example highlight the team player skills you are looking for?”
  • “I have a wide range of knowledge of diversity and equal opportunity regulations, would you like me to quote any more?”
  • “Overall I am happy to stay in this company and work my way up the career ladder”
  • “To summaries, I have come across a wide range of angry customers, but once you know how to calm and resolve their issues you increase your customer retention”

As you can see from the 4 examples above, some of the summaries end with a question; this is a great additional trick to check if you have hit the interviewer’s required points to their question.

If you have you often hear “Yes that was a nice answer” or “I think we have covered everything” if you haven’t you will often be told “I was looking for an example when you X” you can then give a new example covering X or the interviewer may ask you a second but more specific question.