301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions

354 Pages·2005·1.43 MB·English

by  Vicky Oliver

Copyright © 2005 by Vicky Oliver
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www.sourcebooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oliver, Vicky.
301 smart answers to tough interview questions / Vicky Oliver.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Employment interviewing. I. Title: Smart answers to tough interview questions. II. Title: Three hundred
one smart answers to tough interview questions. III. Title: Three hundred and one smart answers to tough
interview questions. IV. Title.
HF5549.5.I6O38 2005
650.14'4--dc22
2005008423
Printed and bound in the United States of America
BG 10 9 8 7 6
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my grandmother Margaret.
May she rest a little more peacefully,
knowing that I finally wrote something
in addition to advertising copy.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Professional Acknowledgments
Introduction: How to Prepare for the Most Harrowing Forty-Five
Minutes of Your Life: The Job Interview
Chapter 1:
Start with the Basics: Answering the Easy Questions
Chapter 2:
Give Us One Good Reason Not to Hire You
Chapter 3:
You’re Too Old, Too Young, Too Seasoned, Too Green, Too
Female
Chapter 4:
The Impossible Questions
Chapter 5:
How to Ace the Personality Test
Chapter 6:
None of Your Business (Or, Are You Really Allowed to Ask Me
That?)
Chapter 7:
Good Cop/Bad Cop Routines in the Interviewing Game
Chapter 8:
Questions from Another Galaxy, Far, Far Away
Chapter 9:
So You Were Fired
Chapter 10:
Your Turn
Chapter 11:
If I’d Only Said X Instead of Y, I’d Be Hired (Or, How to Change
Your Answers after the Interview)
Chapter 12:
Special Situations
Conclusion:
How to Snag the Job of Your Life in Forty-Five Minutes
Appendix:
Job Websites
Index
About the Author
PROFESSIONAL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is a solitary activity. But behind every successful writer is a team of
people without whom the book would have never been made. My heartfelt
thanks to: Charlie Schulman, for believing in this project from the very
beginning and for introducing me to “the second Charlie,” Charles Salzberg.
Charles, thank you for always meeting me for lunch at a moment’s notice to
discuss random writer emergencies, and for introducing me to the indomitable
June Clark.
June, thank you for your energy, drive, dogged persistence, and especially for
introducing me to Bethany Brown.
Bethany, thank you for touching this book with your fantastic editing insights
and for introducing me to the wonderful world of publishing.
INTRODUCTION
How to Prepare for the
Most Harrowing
Forty-Five Minutes
of Your Life:
The Job Interview
In today’s “buyer’s market” jobs are scarce, and hundreds of candidates compete
for all too few positions. Companies have been forced to become incredibly
selective as they sort through resume after resume from scores of qualified
candidates. Due to other forces in the marketplace, glowing references do not
carry nearly as much weight as they used to. As a result, the interview has
become more like a final exam in college or even graduate school, complete with
trick questions, curveballs, and ludicrously tough questions designed to shake
out the applicant “plum tree” by deliberately putting candidates on the spot.
While the average interview still lasts for approximately forty-five minutes, it
could well be the most harrowing forty-five minutes of your life. Interviewers no
longer tend to ask “How well do you respond to pressure?”; they seek to
determine it for themselves instantly, in your very first meeting, by mercilessly
tossing you into a simulated pressure cooker situation.
How do you prepare for today’s new, rigorous, psychologically draining
interview? You need to treat it like the final exam (or trial) that it really is, and
study for it.
The purpose of this book is to give you a quick reference guide to the 301
questions you are most likely to hear, and a way to answer them with
intelligence, passion, and a certain flair that will help you best your competitors.
Tips, brief analyses of why these techniques work, and helpful suggestions on
how to rise above the pack will be peppered throughout.
Make no mistake: in order to prevail, you are going to need to trounce your
competition. With all of the layoffs that have taken place during the past few
years, it’s entirely likely that the company where you really want to work will be
interviewing people from several different levels to fill the position you seek.
You could be competing against someone with three times your experience, or
conversely, against someone who can do the job at half your salary level.
How do you get over the hump? How do you convince this organization that
you are the ideal candidate for the job, and to hell with the competition? Here are
the 10 critical steps that you need to take to ace your first interview, so that you
can move on to your second, third, and fourth interviews (at which point,
hopefully, they’ll offer you the job already).

Top 10 Ways to Nail the Interview
1. Breathe deeply, and try not to panic. That was easy. Phew!
2. Try to set up your meeting for one full week (five business days) from
the time that you first receive the call to come in. Your tendency will be
to go for an earlier meeting to “get it over with.” Do not yield to this
instinct. You will need the time to prepare for your meeting. (Of course,
if the interviewer insists on an earlier date, graciously accept it.)
3. Do your homework. Get on the Internet, and pull every article you can
find about the company. Don’t just read the articles; study and dissect
them. Start crafting a “master list” of questions of your own about the