Wouldn’t it be great if you had the superpower to read minds and know the intent behind every interview question? Unfortunately, the likes of Martian Manhunter and X-man only exist in fiction. On the bright side though, we’ll provide you with a list of typical interview questions, their categorization, and how to frame your answers to help you ace your interview.
As you’ve probably heard before, practice makes perfect, with the right preparation, exercise, and persistence, you will enjoy your interview and make an excellent first impression. A great way to prepare for an interview is to take time and conduct background research of the company, ensure that all the relevant documents are up to date, and most importantly, review some of the most common interview questions.
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What do you know about the company?
3. Why do you want this job?
4. What is your greatest professional achievement?
5. What are you looking for in a new role?
6. Why are you changing your career path?
7. What kind of work environment do you like best?
8. Why should we hire you?
9. Why are you leaving your current job?
10. How would colleagues/coworkers or boss describe you?
11. What are your strengths/weaknesses?
12. How do you deal with pressure or stressful situations?
13. Why do you want to work here?
14. Do you think you’re successful? If yes, discuss some of your achievements.
15. Where do you see yourself in X years?
16. Tell me about a challenge or conflict you faced and how you dealt with it
17. Do obstacles distract you from working towards your goals?
18. Are you a leader?
19. Describe the color blue to a blind person.
20. Do you have any questions?
Your resume made a good impression on the hiring manager and landed you an interview, Congratulations! Now, how do you prepare for the interview questions? How do you answer these basic interview questions? Read on to find out the intent behind each question and how to answer them.
Usually, when people go for an interview, they are asked a variety of questions concerning their employment history, from changes in their career path to their leadership abilities, among other interview questions that highlight why you’ll be the best candidate for the position.
It’s quite evident that the responses you provide need to be framed according to the job you are interviewing for and illustrate why you are the ideal candidate for the role and the best fit for the company. As always, prepare for your interview in advance by going through some of the most common job interview questions and their answers. Generally, interview questions can be categorized into several kinds such as:
Technical questions
Typically, these type of questions are common when there’s a technical aspect to the job being interviewed for. Such types of questions are used to merely gauge the candidate’s degree of knowledge either about the post or their educational background. However, such questions are common in law, investment banking, science or engineering roles. When answering these types of questions, you must illustrate your communication skills, problem-solving skills, and your ability to think rationally.
Brain teasers
Similar to technical interview questions, these aim to assess your rationality skills, mental arithmetic skills ,and your ability to remain calm under pressure. Hiring managers pose this question using approximation questions, abstract ideas, and arithmetic questions of varying difficulties. For arithmetic questions, hiring managers are usually concerned with correctness and speed of the answer while in the rest they focus on how you arrive at the solution. Prepare for brain teaser questions by sharpening your mental arithmetic and critical thinking capabilities.
Competency questions
These questions are framed to assess whether your skills and experiences are relevant to the role. To adequately prepare for such questions, thoroughly go through the job description and identify the required qualifications in regards to skills and experience. Consider the requirements and come up with specific, quantifiable examples that illustrate your relevant skills about the job. Usually, the best method to tackle these questions is using the star (Situation/Task/Action/Results) method.
Strength-based questions
Similar to competency questions, strength-based questions assess your skills and experiences but do not require examples. Typically, with these type of questions, the interviewer is interested in how you answer questions and what you say (verbal cues and body language).
Situational/Behavioral questions
Such questions aim to assess how a candidate would react when faced with various challenges at work. These questions allow candidates to illustrate their problem-solving skills, rationality, decision making, and interpersonal skills. Usually, these questions are part of a written interview test but sometimes may be presented during a one-to-one interview. As such, prior preparation is paramount. Also, answer these types of questions using the star technique.
Motivation questions
These are common questions which generally aim to gauge a candidate’s genuineness and motivation for the role. Typically, these questions focus on your career motivations, professional achievements, and factors that drive you to achieve your goals (skills and abilities). To adequately answer this questions, carry out background research of the company and the role you are interviewing for then craft your answer to demonstrate how your skills and experiences match what the company is looking for.
Case questions
These kind of questions usually present the candidate with a business or organizational problem that the company faced. This is an opportunity to illustrate your communication, analytical and rationalization skills. The assessment majorly focusses on your ability to identify a problem or challenges and to come up with a practical solution. In this case, the hiring manager is more focused on the candidate’s commercial awareness. Typically, it would be intelligent to have basic knowledge of the vital industry concepts. For example, if its investment banking terms such as revenue, market share, profit, cost, etc. would be helpful.
Read on to find out how to answer interview questions and the intent behind each.
Usually, interviewers start with an open-ended question such as this to break the ice, get a general overview of your background, and make you feel comfortable during the process.
Usually, interviewers use this question to determine whether the candidate is interested in the position. Employers are looking for people who understand the mission, vision, and goal of the company.
As easy as this interview question may seem it’s not, especially if you haven’t prepared adequately for it. Employers can ask you this question or other variations of this question, only phrased differently: What would you do if you were hired? Alternatively, what interests you about this job are some of the variations of this question? Alternatively, what would be your ideal company culture?
When answering this question, ensure that you have thoroughly researched the company and you are in a position to prove to the hiring manager that you are the ideal candidate for the job. To answer this question:
Nothing says “hire me” better than a perfect track record from previous jobs. Use the STAR technique: set the situation and the task you were expected to complete, the action you took and the results achieved. To answer this question:
Interviewers ask this question to determine if the candidate’s goals align to that of that company. When answering this question focus on skills and interests that make you the best candidate. Consider your intentions about the position and illustrate what you are going to contribute to the company.
A change in career raises curiosity on the interviewers. This question enables them to determine whether the candidate left his or her previous position for significant reasons such as the search for career growth, a better opportunity or challenge.
Subtly, the hiring manager wants to make sure that you didn’t leave your previous position due to poor performance or difficult work relationships. Your work as the candidate is to convince the hiring manager that you left because the job wasn’t fulfilling anymore and not to escape from a lousy working experience. To answer this question:
Such an interview question aims to establish how well you will fit in with the company culture and assists the interviewer to identify the environment that you are most productive in. In most cases, a work environment usually refers to an organizational structure, relationship with coworkers and supervisors, room for growth and work-life balance.
Ideally, your answer should illustrate that you want a work environment that’s similar to the company you’re applying to.
As intimidating as this question may seem, this is an opportunity for you to sell yourself, highlight your relevant experiences, accomplishments, and skills, to the hiring manager. Use this opportunity to convince the hiring manager that you’re the best candidate for the job and prove the value you’ll bring.
Alternatively, the hiring manager can you ask you why are you the best person for the job? Alternatively, what/how can you contribute to the company? All these questions require you to sell yourself and prove that you’ll be able to deliver quality work if hired.
This question is a tricky one; the interviewer wants to know your views about your current or past job. Hiring managers almost always ask this question or a variation of it. Why were you fired? Alternatively, why did you quit your job? Alternatively, why have you been out of work for so long? Alternatively, why is there a gap in your employment?
Being demoted from a previous role, losing your job or having a gap year of employment is not a problem, the problem only arises when you fail to answer this question well. Prepare in advance and be ready to give an answer that positions you to return to work.
To effectively approach such questions, you need to consider factors such as what you did after leaving your job, your track record and your success level in your previous employment.
Highlight traits or strengths that you haven’t mentioned already such as your strong work ethics or helping colleagues meet goals when stranded. Showcase your soft skills.
Here the interviewer is trying to determine whether you’re self-aware and honest. Please don’t be negative when talking about your weaknesses, strike a balance, consider your struggles and areas you need to work on and toot your horn when discussing your strengths, it’s allowed!
This is a behavioral question which gives the recruiter an opportunity to gauge future behavior based on your past behavior. It’s always a good idea to provide examples and paint a picture for the interviewer when answering this question.
Everyone gets stressed. Therefore you can’t respond by claiming that you never get stressed. Instead, you can illustrate how stress affects you, and how you deal with it. When answering this question:
This question aims to determine your interest in the specific job or your stake in the company. Mostly, the hiring manager wants to decide whether or not you are sincerely interested in the company and will deliver results if hired. To answer this question:
Invariably say yes, and then discuss your greatest and proudest achievements or accomplishments. The interviewer is trying to assess your past successes and establish whether you’re determined to achieve the same results or better ones in the future. This is a behavioral question.
This question is about determining employee retention if given the role and gauge whether you’ve thought about your career path.
Interviewers use behavioral questions to gauge how you solve problems or confront challenges. Most jobs involve interaction with different types of people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Disagreements are inevitable.
Usually, this is a follow-up to the question such as: What are your career goals, where do you see yourself in X years? These questions aim to determine whether the candidate is ambitious and has the capabilities to develop and strategize a plan towards achieving these goals. For your answer to stand out focus on demonstrating an operational strategy and steps you are taking or have taken to achieve these goals. Prepare for such a question by doing your research on the company as well as the industry you are interested in, ensure you understand what the requirements entail.
If you’re interviewing for a role that requires leadership skills, experiences that demonstrate your capability to lead, your leadership style, accomplishments, and future expectations are what you need to focus on. This type of question can be presented in various forms such as: As a negotiator, what would your greatest attribute be? Does your decision-making process involve taking risks? Which personal experiences have helped you become a great leader? Tell me about a time when you had to complete a task. How did you handle it and were you successful? What is your management style?
When answering these kind of questions remember that leadership is the ability to persuade people to do more than they thought was possible.Therefore,
Questions which require the candidate to demonstrate their problem-solving capabilities, arithmetic, logic, critical thinking, creativity and the ability to work under pressure are referred to as brain teasers, and mostly used for technical or analytical roles. The questions can be framed differently from how many balls can fit in Boeing 747? to what is the sum of the numbers between 1 to 100? to why are utility hole covers circular? to convince me this table is a chair. Many times, the answers to such questions is insignificant; it’s how you arrive at the solution that matters.
Interviews are an excellent opportunity for you to get a general feel of the company-to sniff out any potential red flags and determine whether the job is a good fit for you. Therefore, if an interviewer asks you “do you have any questions for me? “, always say yes.
Job interviews can be stressful. From having to remember which questions to ask, picking out an appropriate outfit, figuring out what to bring to an interview, and ensuring that you have all the requirements before your meeting can be nerve-wracking. Therefore, do not wait until the last minute to start preparing. Start as early as possible and go through the list of questions highlighted above to know how to answer them correctly.
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