The 7 Interview Questions You Might Be Asked

One of the best ways to get an inside scoop on what you might be asked at a job interview is to review hiring manager advice columns on what hiring managers should ask at the job interview. Hiring managers and all human resource staff are constantly looking to get advice on the best way to find good candidates. As an applicant, you can use that advice to help figure out what to expect at the interview.

Recently a column came out in the Business Net newsletter entitled “The 7 Questions You Must Ask at a Job Interview.” It was written to give employers an idea of what to ask at the job interview in order to find the best candidate. So today, we’ll go the opposite route. We’ll look at what the employer might ask based on the above column, and use it to explain how you should best answer each type of question.

Questions From the Article You Might Be Asked

• “How About Those Yankees?”

Yes, this is a rapport question. The goal of these is to gain a friendship and a trust with the applicant. However, remember that every question is an interview question, even when it is a rapport question. Stay away from negative statements like “I don’t like baseball” or “The weather outside is annoying.” Keep it positive and upbeat.

• “Tell Me About a Time You Had to Overcome Major Obstacles”

This is a behavioral interview question. The employer is looking for you to give an example, so it is important to study up on behavioral interview questions (/questions-and-answers/behavioral-interview) and find a good example of a problem/obstacle in your professional career. Then make sure that you give an effective way that you solved the problem. Put more focus on the solution than you do on the problem.

• “What Interests You in the Position?”

This is both a test of your ability to research the company/position and your ability to show you are interested in more than the money. Research the company thoroughly. Explain why you believe the company is important to you (using real examples of their offerings and innovation) and explain why you are a good fit for your role.

• “Is There Intelligent Life in Outer Space?”

These wild card interview questions are designed to throw you off your game. You cannot plan for questions that you do not expect. The key to these is to answer as though the question isn’t stupid, use a real thought process, and be prepared to explain your answer confidently. Stay away from anything negative, which includes religious arguments, personal dislikes, etc. Positive, confident attitude is key.

• “What is On Your To Do List Your First Day at Work?”

Not the best example of the “situational questions” used in the article, but the key is to devise a real plan of action. For first day question you could discuss meeting staff members, setting up organizational sheets, etc. For “behind schedule” questions you can discuss what you do to prioritize. What’s important is that you have real, logical plans of action.

• “Why Did You Get Into This Line of Work?”

Questions about your motivations are common. You should be prepared to discuss what motivates you both in any work environment and in the field. Again, stay away from money, stay away from competition. Discuss personal truths that help you enjoy the field. If you prepare a good answer it is unlikely you will turn off any prospective employers with this question.

• “But Enough About You, What About Us?”

It cannot be emphasized enough how important it is to research the company, learn about all of their products and tools, and have plenty of questions to ask the company as well as the ability to discuss what is coming down the pipeline. Research and ask. Research and ask. Consider those two factors a huge key to success in your job interview.

Be Ready

Though the questions will change, these types of questions are at every interview. Be prepared to answer these questions in the style mentioned above.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Prepare for all types of interview questions.
• Prepare to answer these questions with confidence.

QA – How to Answer Specific Questions About Being Overqualified for a Job

Question

“I recently interviewed for a job to which I was pretty severely overqualified. They asked me several questions that related to my over-qualifications and needless to say I did not answer them well and I did not get the job. How should I have answered interview questions about being overqualified?”

Answer

This is a tough one. You never want to completely minimize your qualifications because that would make you look like a bad employee, but you do not want to rave about them either because this will only serve to reinforce their belief you are overqualified. The best thing to do is to look at how to answer their questions on a case by case basis. Below are examples of how to answer some of the tougher overqualified applicant questions.

Interview Questions and Answers

Q: What will stop you from moving on once you have found a better opportunity?

A: Every position I have applied for fits directly in line with my career path. I was attracted to your company for XYZ reasons and applied for the position for ABC reason. This is not a step down in my career path. If anything, it is directly in line with my career goals, because it places me within a company that I admire – one that does work that I would be proud to do. My goal is to grow within this company just as I grew with my previous employer.”

Q: How will you stay motivated?

A: The reason I have been able to achieve success in my career is specifically because my motivation is to do my best at the job at hand. All jobs have difficulties. All jobs require a lot of hard work. Though the work may be different, the motivation to complete the work to a high degree of quality and accuracy does not change. There is always a challenge at any occupation, and these tasks are no easier or harder than any other task I have had to complete.

Q: What are you expecting in terms of advancement?

A: I am always up for taking on new challenges. Should the department require that I take on greater responsibility based on my abilities, I will happily add that work to my daily tasks. If they do not, then I will continue to work hard at my current position.

Q: Are you comfortable taking orders from supervisors with less professional experience?

A: There is no such thing as a true leadership position. When you are an entry level employee you are delegated tasks by supervisors. When you are CEO of a major company, you are working for stockholders and investors. You are always working under someone, so it is will be no different working under a supervisor than it was working under the shareholders at my previous position.

Common Theme

The common theme with these answers is that rather than downplaying your experiences, you are highlighting the similarities between your previous positions and the one you are about to undertake. In many ways you are making the job you are applying for sound harder, rather than making your qualifications seem less impressive. Plan to answer questions in this manner, and you should be able to overcome the appearance of being overqualified for a role.

Career Interview Question: What Are You Looking For in Career Development?

Employers have a vested interest in your career path. If your goals in life are to quit your job and become a rodeo clown for a South Korean albino monkey circus, chances are you are not going to stick around to really bring much value to the organization. On the other hand, if you want to become CEO of the company, there is a good chance you are going to work hard and be productive.

How to Answer

You do not really want to claim you plan on being CEO of the company. Management can feel easily threatened if you are gunning for your jobs, and if you are new to the professional world, your answer is going to seem like a joke (becoming a CEO takes decades). Instead, simply talk about realistic expectations and make it sound like you plan on being around for a while.

Bad Answer

“At the moment, I’m happy sticking with this job and seeing where it takes me. I don’t have any specific plans, but I do know that I’d like to go somewhere and I figure we’ll see where the job takes me.”

Good Answer

“My goal is to progressively earn more responsibilities over time. I hope to someday be able to manage my own team and lead projects on my own, but my short term goals are to quickly earn new responsibilities as I use my skills to prove I deserve the challenge.”

If you have a specific career goal, you can go ahead and name it. If you don’t, you can use an answer like the one above. One thing to note, however, is that if your hiring manager is currently in the role that you hope to pursue, it is probably not a good idea to say that you’d like to be in their job within 5 years.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Show dedication with the company.
• Use realistic goals.

Common Interview Question – What Role Do You Play in a Group?

Throughout your working career you are going to be a part of groups. You will be called to meetings (groups), you will work in teams (group), you will be part of a department (group); you will be in groups all throughout your professional life.

Your personality plays a large part in the role you take within that group. Shy people tend to take a more submissive role. Loud, obnoxious people tend to take on a leadership role. Depending on your personality, your role in the group differs. Most likely you know what role you play already. When you hang out with a random assortment of friends, are you the one doing most of the talking and leading? Are you more submissive? These traits carry over into all aspects of your life.

Question – What Role Do You Play in a Group?

This is a straight challenge question. The interviewer is trying to see how much confidence you have in yourself. Below are a sample of bad, mediocre, and good answers to this type of question.

Bad Answer

“My preference is to be more of a follower. I like to let others take on a leadership role and prefer to be given direction rather than giving others direction.”

Obviously you never want to be seen as weak or a follower. This is clearly the wrong answer.

Mediocre Answer

“Whenever I am in a group, I immediately take on a leadership role. I try to listen to the opinions of others and try to guide the group towards the ultimate objective.”

To sell this answer, you must already seem like a leader. If you have let the interviewer lead discussion and have not come out as a powerful voice during the interview, this is going to seem like a BS answer. Telling the interviewer that you are the leader is a good answer, but you need to sell it, and most people won’t.

Good Answer

“My role in the group is often mediator. I try to facilitate discussion, interjecting my own thoughts when necessary. Mediator allows me to adapt to a leadership or subordinate role depending on the project, tasks, and needs of the group.”

This is a much better answer. Mediators are a silent leader. They help all members of a group communicate and ultimately make the final decision despite not necessarily acting as a leader within the team. This is a far more believable answer and one that is unlikely to appear like pandering as you would with the mediocre answer.

Answering Questions That Have too Obvious an Answer

“What role do you play in a group” is an interview question with an answer that is too obvious. Employers want leaders, so it would make sense to simply answer the question by saying you are a group leader. However, your job interview performance must be able to back up that answer, and that is difficult since you are not in a position of leadership during the interview. Answers such as “mediator” are more believable and sound much less like pandering to the interviewer.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Look for less obvious answers when the best answer is too obvious.

Common Interview Question – What Do You Consider Your Greatest Achievement?

Interview questions are notorious for putting you on the spot with a strange or surprising question. Just yesterday we discussed a question about using five words to describe yourself. Interviewers don’t care how you describe yourself, nor do they care “what kind of tree you would be.” Those questions are designed to see how you answer them, not what your answers are.

There are other interview questions that have low expectations of honesty. No one answers “What is your biggest weakness” correctly. They make up a weakness that isn’t really a weakness to make them look better, like “My biggest weakness is that I don’t truly recognize how amazing I am.”

Yet sometimes there are questions that are legitimately looking for a real, honest answer. One such question is “What Do You Consider Your Greatest Achievement?”

How to Answer

This is your chance to show how you can be a great employee. Your greatest achievement should be something that benefitted your previous companies. It should be something that shows hard work, dedication, and growth. Examples of great achievements include:

• Winning important clients for your company.
• Achieving or beating sales/marketing/revenue goals.
• Establishing a new process or work method.
• Items you developed.
• Ideas that drastically altered the company.

It doesn’t really matter what your greatest accomplishments are. What matters is that you are proud of them, that they showed hard work and dedication, and that your ideas made your previous company better. Ideally they will have a process you went through that you can explain or numerical effects on the company you can point to.

Don’t Get Cute

Some applicants like to get cute with their answer. They may say “I accomplished a lot with company X, but my greatest accomplishment may have been the smile I put on my coworker’s face one time when they were down” or “I accomplished a lot at company X, but my greatest achievement may have been the birth of my daughter.” The employer doesn’t need to be swayed by something meaningful. They simply want to know what you consider your greatest professional accomplishment, and that is what you should give them.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Tell the employer your greatest professional accomplishment.
• Don’t be cute.

Common Interview Question – Describe Yourself in 5 Words

Many interview questions and answers are designed for the sole purpose of surprising you. Your answers are not nearly as important as your ability to answer the question with ease. Working professionals that do not expect these questions may roll their eyes or laugh at the question being asked. Those are the behaviors that the interview does not want to see. The interviewer wants to see that you take each question seriously, and that your answer is thoughtful and interesting.

One of the prime examples of these types of questions is “Describe Yourself in 5 Words” or “What are 5 Words to Describe Yourself.”

Wrong Responses

• “Hahahaha, okay… um… sure, why not.”
• “Really? Are you serious?”
• “Um… Yeah… Okay…”

Right Responses

You should react to the question as you would react to any interview question. You should not smile or laugh or think that the question is hilarious, because it isn’t. Your employer wants to see that you take each question seriously.

That said, it is okay to insert a little joke here and there. Your “5 words” do not need to all be of the utmost professionalism. Consider an answer like the following:

• Adaptive
• Energetic
• Intelligent
• Responsive
• Caffeinated

The first four are attractive qualities, while the fifth is a humorous twist that still represents who you are as a person. This question gives you a very small opportunity to showcase a little personality while still providing a solid answer. It doesn’t completely matter what words you choose, provided they are intelligent words that reflect well on your character (stay away from anything negative, such as “stubborn” and avoid any words that are too simplistic, like “Good”). What matters is how you deliver it. Deliver the answer with confidence and without arrogance and you will have answered this question correctly.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Never act as though a question is stupid or funny.
• Feel free and add a little humor but take this question seriously.

Common Interview Question – How Do You Handle Repetitive Tasks?

Make no mistake – corporate life is boring. Sure, some professionals have deluded themselves into thinking that every day they spend at work is exciting, but in most cases these workers find even the most irritating tasks to be exciting, and they happen to be spending most of their time in the office place.

You will be doing a lot of repetitive tasks. Even more so as an entry level employee. Repetitive tasks are the nature of business. If every day was new, chances are you wouldn’t be equipped to handle all of the projects you would be forced to undertake.

Interview Question: How Do You Handle Repetitive Tasks?

For some jobs, especially those where tedious tasks play a significant role, employers may ask you directly how you handle repetitive tasks during your interview. As always, you should let the interviewer believe that you handle repetitive tasks well.

There are two ways to answer this question. The first is to bring in your previous experience. The second is to act like the hopelessly optimistic professionals we discussed in the beginning of this post.

1. “Repetition has never bothered me. Back with my old employer, I spent 3 months retyping the same data into our project databases in order to ensure accuracy…”
2. “Repetition has never bothered me. Perhaps it is because I feel that nothing is ever truly repetitive. Each day is a new day, and though I may be performing the same tasks, everything else surrounding the tasks has changed.”

Your answer does not need to be any longer than that. Focus on either your past experiences or your “go getter” attitude and you should answer the question well. The key is to expand on your answer in order to make it more believable. Answering “they’re fine” makes it sound like you do not take the question seriously. Answering with a positive, upbeat statement that includes why you are not bothered by repetition.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Describe why you are not bothered by repetitive tasks or
• Relate a previous work experience that was very repetitive.

Common Job Interview Question – How Do You Handle Change?

When you start at a new job, many things are going to feel different. You are going to have different coworkers. You are going to have different supervisors. You are going to have different tasks. These can all be stressful events. In addition, while you are working changes will be made as well. Staff members will come and go. Companies will change their business strategies. Things happen.

It is these differences that inspired the question “how well do you handle change?” A company that hires someone that does not handle change well is going to experience severe problems with productivity. Clearly your answer should be that you handle change well. However, you do not want to leave an answer at “I handle change well.” This answer is a little too short and doesn’t let them get to know your abilities. Below are some different ways you can answer this type of job interview question.

Possible Answers

• “Change is what makes life interesting. Monotony may be easy, but it is not exciting. Positive or negative I am happy to adapt to any situation simply for the experience.”
• “Everything, every day and everyone is different. No two tasks are ever the same, just as the same person may have different emotions, actions or responses at any given time. I don’t consider change to be a big deal because even the things that are ‘the same’ have differences.”
• “We live with change every day of our lives. I consider myself adaptable to this change and have long since grown to appreciate it as a unique part of life.”

You should find your own answer, but these examples should serve to show you that there are ways to answer this question beyond “yes, I handle change well” that will improve your job chances and help your answer to the interview question become more believable and not a cop out designed to avoid responding.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Try to expand your answer rather than simply saying “I handle change well.”

How to Answer Illegal Job Interview Questions

In the last post, we went over types of illegal interview questions that you may be asked at your interview, but are not technically legal. Today, we will go over how to answer these questions in such a way that you do not harm your job interview chances.

Ask Yourself if it is Important

The reason that these interview questions are illegal is because their answers can lead to hiring discrimination. However, the keyword is “can,” not “will.” In most cases the answers will probably have no effect on your interview chances at all. So if you are asked an illegal job interview question such as “are you married?” you should still answer the question and not worried about it unless you believe that your answer may lead to prejudices.

Avoiding Answers

In most cases you will want to avoid the specifics of each question. For example, if you are asked a question about any religious organizations you belong to (against the law), you can respond with “I currently do not belong X, Y, and Z professional organizations” and not mention any religious organizations at all. This is the best way to answer these questions.

Don’t Answer

Your other option is to simply not answer the question. It is a bad idea to say “You have asked me an illegal question that I refuse to answer” because in most cases illegal job interview questions are asked by accident by new employees that were not aware of the law, and not in a deliberate attempt to avoid hiring you. However, what you can say is “I prefer not to answer questions about my personal life so that I can keep the two separate at all times.” If they push you for it, apologize and ask if you can move on.

Do You Want to Work There?

If you are pushed for an answer to an illegal interview question, there are ways to avoid answering the question. However, you should also ask yourself if you want to work for an employer that is ignorant of illegal hiring practices. It is unlikely in today’s day and age that companies will knowingly ask you illegal interview questions in order to discriminate against you. Most often it is simply an honest mistake. However, it is an honest mistake that is far more common at companies that know little about the business world, and these may be companies you want to avoid.

If you are forced to answer one of these illegal interview questions, you can file a claim and take action against the employer.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Most illegal job interview questions are asked by accident, not as a reason to discriminate.
• There are ways to avoid your answer and still keeping your job interview chances alive.

Additional Links

• US Equal Opportunity Commission FAQs about Job Interview Discrimination

How Not to Answer a Behavioral Interview Question

Behavioral interview questions are some of the toughest interview questions to answer. They require you to think back to your experiences and come up with examples of how you have dealt with various common situations in the past, in order to show how you will deal with similar situations in the present.

Behavioral interviews are fraught with mistakes when you do not adequately prepare. Here are a variety of things not to say during your behavioral interview.

Common Behavioral Interview Answer Mistakes

• “I can’t think of any.”

There may be times that you cannot think of any specific instance, or you do not want to share the only answer you could remember. In these cases, never simply say you don’t have an example and try to move on to the next question. Instead, tell the interviewer that you cannot think of a specific instance but “… if I were to encounter that situation I would deal with it thusly.”

• Making Up a Story on the Fly

It is also a terrible idea to make up a story with no basis in truth. Your story may have inconsistencies, and you may not be able to relate a good example back to your initial point. Fake stories are easy to spot, because they are usually devoid of details that would otherwise be in more truthful stories.

• Telling an Unrelated Story

Another common problem during behavioral job interviews is when the applicant starts to tell a story that ends up being completely unrelated to the question. This often happens when you do not prepare. An employer will ask you a behavioral interview question such as “Describe a time where you disagreed with your boss” and you will start telling a story about how your supervisor once told you to take program the next set of code and you forgot because the computers were in the process of getting hacked by a bug that you didn’t even introduce but then the supervisor got a little upset so the two of you decided to have coffee and hug it out and funny story while you were getting coffee the waitress dropped off the check and the supervisor paid and … oh wait… where was I? What was the question again?

• Telling a Bad Story

Telling a bad story is like telling an unrelated story. By the time you have finished your answer, your job interviewer will stare at you, mouth agape, wondering why in the world you even bothered.

• Telling a Story that Makes You Look Incompetent

Of course, the final behavioral interview mistake to avoid is telling a story that doesn’t make you appear to be a model employee. Once again, this occurs usually due to lack of practice. Your job interviewer will ask you something like “Describe a time you disagreed with your boss” and you answer confidently with “This one time my boss told me to start working on the next software product and I thought it would be waste of time, so he and had a meeting to discuss the matter  and we ended up agreeing that it should be put on the shelf.” Hooray for you, you managed to talk your boss out of making you do work. Good luck getting a job with that answer.

Avoid These Behavioral Job Interview Mistakes

Clearly there are a number of different errors you can make while answering a behavioral job interview question. The best way to make sure you answer the question the right way is to practice. Think up great stories for every type of question, write them out and practice answering them. Only by doing so will you avoid these mistakes.

Take Away Interview tips

• Practice your behavioral interview answers.
• Don’t lie or avoid any questions.

Additional Links

• Sample Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers