101 great answers to the toughest interview questions

190 Pages·2000·1.04 MB·English

by  Fry

101 G A T
REAT NSWERS TO THE OUGHEST
I Q
NTERVIEW UESTIONS
25th Anniversary Edition
RON FRY
| Contents |
Introduction
You Are in Charge
Chapter One
The Interview Process
Chapter Two
Who Are You?
Chapter Three
So, Tell Me About Yourself
Chapter Four
Questions About Your Education
Chapter Five
Questions About Your Experience
Chapter Six
Questions About Core Competencies
Chapter Seven
Questions About Your Current (or Last) Job
Chapter Eight
So Why Us?
Chapter Nine
Questions About Your Personal Life
Chapter Ten
Questions to Wrap Things Up
Epilogue
I’ve Got a Secret
Index
INTRODUCTION
You Are in Charge
I started writing the first edition of this book in 1989, and the parallels with that
year are a little eerie.
The unemployment rate then and now is 5.3% and, then and now, has fallen
steadily for two years. The 1989 economy had recovered from a 1982 recession
and falling oil prices, and weathered a 1987 market crash. Our “ho-hum
economy,” as the New York Times recently characterized it, is still recovering
from a 2008 market crash and the Great Recession. The price of oil has fallen
precipitously.
Unemployment figures and pundits paint a contrasting picture—while the
job market for current or recent college grads is considered the best in a decade
or more, there are 6.5 million people “working part time for economic reasons.”
In other words, 6.5 million people who would prefer to work full time but can’t
find a full-time job.
Whether we are in a booming economy or a recession, most of the things you
need to know and do during the interview process do not really change. In the 27
years since I wrote the first edition, an ever-changing job market has morphed
from a seller’s (employee-friendly) market to a buyer’s (employer-friendly)
market and back again. But in good times and bad, the power this book has
given interviewees—whatever their ages, skills, or qualifications—has continued
to grow.
I certainly couldn’t boast of my own interviewing skills before I wrote this
book. On the contrary, I had often not gotten jobs for which I was eminently
qualified. So I spent quite a lot of time learning all the mistakes you could
possibly make, having made each one of them—twice.
Now, as a veteran of the other side of the desk as well (I’ve hired hundreds
and interviewed thousands), I can tell you that interviewing is more serious
business than ever before.
Employers are looking for “self-managing” employees—people who are
versatile, confident, ready and able to work with a team, and not afraid to roll up
versatile, confident, ready and able to work with a team, and not afraid to roll up
their sleeves, work long hours, and get the job done. “That’s me,” you chortle.
Congratulations. But you won’t get the chance to prove yourself on the job
without making it through the interview process.
You can’t cheat on these tests
There has been one significant development since the last edition of this book.
According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of companies—including 457 of
the Fortune 500—are using some form of “personality” testing that aims to
correlate specific personality traits with success in a particular job. One test
vendor, Infor, claims to assess more than a million candidates a month.
While tests such as Myers-Briggs and the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory) were popular during the 1960s and ’70s, we are clearly in
a new age that Time magazine recently noted “is being driven by a collision of
two hot trends: Big Data and analytics…The result is a mostly unchallenged
belief that lots of data combined with lots of analytics can optimize pretty much
anything…even people. Hence, people analytics.”
You may now have to take the DISC Assessment, which will grade you in
four areas—Dominance, Defiance, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. Or the
Hogan Personality Inventory, which assesses five. The 16PF measures 16
“normal-range” personality traits and five “second-order” traits. The California
Psychological Inventory uses 18 scales in four classes to determine what the test
taker will do in specific on-the-job situations. And the Caliper Profile will assess
25 personality traits related to job performance. The winner of this personality
numbers game so far is Gallup’s Clifton Strengthfinder, which measures 34 traits
(but is most interested in your top five).
I know from experience that you cannot “beat” these tests. If you try to
choose the answers you believe are “obviously” the ones showing your
leadership, motivational, or team-building skills, you will not succeed. Since you
can’t really prepare for these tests, relax and try to answer the questions
honestly. Most such tests are merely trying to identify the jobs for which your
“personality type” is best suited. And at most companies, they are merely one
component of the interview process.
I will leave it to others to argue whether it is possible (or desirable) to
accurately test for job-specific “success traits.” Whatever you believe about this
new trend, it is clearly another obstacle many of you will need to hurdle.
Interviewing was never easy, and right now it is as hard as ever. Companies
Interviewing was never easy, and right now it is as hard as ever. Companies
are taking far longer to make hiring decisions, and only after subjecting
prospective employees to these tests and scheduling more and longer interviews.
But of all the tools in your professional arsenal, your ability to shine in that
brief moment in time—your initial interview—can make or break your chances
for a second go-around, and, ultimately, dictate whether you’re even given a shot
at the job.
Practice still makes perfect
Like playing the piano, interviewing takes practice, and practice makes perfect.
The hours of personal interviewing experience—the tragedies and the triumphs
—as well as my years as an interviewer are the basis for this book. I hope to
spare you many of the indignities I suffered along the way, by helping you
prepare for the interview of your worst nightmares—at a comfortable remove
from the interviewer’s glare.
Will you have to answer every question I’ve included? Certainly not—at
least, not in a single interview. But chances are, the questions tomorrow’s
interviewer doesn’t ask will be on the tip of the next interviewer’s tongue. Why?
It’s a mystery.
I didn’t realize 25 years ago that I would start a competitive publishing battle
to see how many interview questions could be featured in a single book. There
were always more than 101 questions in my book once one considered all the
variations that I listed. But the success of that first edition led to an unfortunate
numbers game. Soon there was a book touting 201 questions and answers, then
301, then 500, and, in a final burst of one-upmanship, 501.
These numbers really don’t matter, especially if a single word change in one
question magically transforms it into another. So please don’t count the
questions in this edition or worry that you need to look at these other books to
get a more “complete” list. Believe me, the ones in this book will suffice!
Become an interview artist
Most interviewers are not trying to torture you for sport. Their motive is to
quickly learn enough about you to make an informed decision—should you stay
or should you go? By the same token, if you know what they’re looking for, you
can craft your answers accordingly (and reduce your own fear and anxiety at the
same time).
I hope you’ll take it a step further and use these questions as the basis for
I hope you’ll take it a step further and use these questions as the basis for
some thoughtful self-exploration. You’ll need to be prepared to think for
yourself—on your feet, not by the seat of your pants.
While it is certainly competitive, the interview process is not a competition.
Rather than thinking of yourself as an athlete trying to “out-answer” the other
candidates, consider an interview your chance to be an artist—to paint a portrait
of the person you are, the candidate any company should like, respect…and want
to hire.
Chapters 1 and 2 offer a detailed discussion of the work you need to do and
the things you need to think about long before you strut into your first interview.
Interviewing may not be 99 percent preparation, but it’s certainly 50 percent.
In Chapters 3 through 10, we’ll get into the meat of the book—the questions
for which you must prepare and the answers most interviewers are hoping to
hear. Each question is generally followed by one or more subheadings:
What do they want to hear?
(What information is the interviewer seeking?)
THUMBS UP (What’s a good answer?)
THUMBS DOWN (What’s a poor answer?)
I’ve listed the follow-up questions you should expect or variations an
interviewer may substitute after many of the questions.
The questions in this book are grouped by type; they are not in some
suggested order. Many of the questions in chapters 8 or 10, for example, may
well be some of the first questions asked in every interview! So read the entire
book and prepare for all of the questions in any order.
Despite the emphasis on “great answers,” I do not recommend rote
memorization. Trotting out a staged, “textbook” answer to a question is not the
point of the interview process… or of this book. It is actually more important to
concentrate on the “What do they want to hear?” section after each question, to
have an understanding of why the interviewer is asking a particular question and
what you need to do to frame a winning answer.
The “thumbs down” after many of the questions indicate answers that will
The “thumbs down” after many of the questions indicate answers that will
make the average interviewer cringe and the busy interviewer simply suggest
you try another firm.
Oh, no, you didn’t!
I’m going to assume that you have already been on enough interviews (or, if
you’re a recent graduate, read enough interviewing books), to know that there
are rules to follow during interviews. So I’m not going to discuss most of them
here.
But there is a list of “no-no’s” that are so important, failing to avoid them can
virtually doom any chance you have of securing the job before the interview
even starts. Given their seriousness, I thought it prudent to remind you of them:
“What does this company do?”
A key part of the interview process is preparation—researching the company,
industry, and position, preparing pertinent questions, being ready to sprinkle
your knowledge into the conversation. So failing to do any of this will not
impress most interviewers. I have had candidates ask me what exactly my
company did.
The immediate and obvious answer: Not hire them.
On time and looking good
For many interviewers, showing up late is immediate cause for canceling the
interview. It doesn’t matter that traffic backed up, your cat threw up a hairball,
or you just got lost in the elevator.
Being on time is not racing down the final corridor with moments to spare.
Some interviewers agree with New York Giants football coach Tom Coughlin,
who declared that team members were late for meetings if they didn’t show up
fifteen minutes early.
Poor grooming is a basic turnoff. Wearing so much perfume or cologne that
a gasping interviewer lunges for the window isn’t recommended. Nor is wearing
more makeup than a runway model, clanking along with a pocketful of change
or an armload of bangles and bells, or sporting an unkempt beard (or, for some
interviewers, even fashionable stubble).
Given the tube tops, sneakers, short skirts, and patterned stockings I’ve seen
waltz through my door (and all on one candidate!), some of you may need to
review the appropriate dress for every interview.
While women no longer need to sport a black business suit and pearls,
dressing tastefully in professional apparel is still a must. And that black suit will
still work in most environments.
Men should wear a white or light blue shirt, conservative suit, silk tie, and
shined dress shoes.
No one should think of wearing ties that glow in the dark, T-shirts
advertising anything (but especially not X-rated), or any clothes even you know
are totally unprofessional.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics
If you lie about anything—especially where and when you worked, what you
did, where and when (or even if) you attended college—you will be caught. No
matter how lowly the job, there are significant expenses involved with hiring
someone to perform it. So companies will take the time to check out references.
The higher up the food chain you climb, the more intense their scrutiny.
Even if the lie is inconsequential, the very fact that you lied will, in virtually
all instances, be immediate grounds for dismissal. Lacking a particular skill or
experience may not automatically exclude you from getting the job. Lying about
it will. Just ask former NBC news anchor Brian Williams about the
consequences of “shading” the truth or “misremembering” an experience.
While honesty may be the best (and only) policy, it is not necessary to
share anything and everything with your interviewer. Anything you do in the
privacy of your own home is not something you need to share.
And do be smart enough, when asked what interests you about the job, not to
answer, “Heck, I just need a job with benefits. I’m three months along and can’t
wait until my maternity leave starts.”
The eyes have it
Don’t underestimate the effect of your own body language on the
interviewer. While many people don’t mean what they say or say what they