Wednesday, January 16, 2008

How to job interview questions and answers

by Ian Iacocca

Introduction

Here's a few of the hardest and most important job interview questions and answers that I've had in the past.

Instructions
Difficulty: Moderate

Things You'll Need
In-depth research into your own background
your resume
tons of sleep before your job interview
Steps

1Step OneLet's start off with one the most detailed of the job interview questions and answers.

1. Probing questions:

Do you guys remember when you very younger, you’re Mom would ask you a question and you didn’t really feel like answering so you gave those “one-word” answers that she really hated? And then what did she do? They starting more and more questions, almost forcing you to answer. Well this interview question is sort of like that. The idea is to for the interviewer to know everything about the situation.

3. Tell me about your role when you worked in a team.

I can remember when I worked for [company].
My marketing manager at the time noticed that our RFP (request for proposal) process was outdated [any further explanation of the process]
For this task, I would have to interview everyone involved about how
to improve the process from project managers, to sales VPs, to the
Senior VP of Marketing and Sales.

“What did you like most about it?”


I was really excited to get the chance to meet all these people in my company and to be a driving force of change in our entire sales process.

4. What didn’t you like?

However, I found out that these people were very busy and barely had
any time. I was getting discouraged and a little bit upset to go back
and forth with them, desperately trying to set up a time to meet. But
I stuck with it and persisted. In the meantime, when some managers were
canceling my meetings, I researched their role in the process myself and
came up with some relevant questions to ask.

5. What happened in the end?

Then when we finally did meet, they were alarmed at the amount of information I knew. I even found that some wanted to stay for some additional time with to discuss my personal goals.

The head manager of sales took some time out after meeting to
discuss how I could best prepare for a future sales career. At that
internship, I also made great friends with the SVP and I talk to him often to this day. I learned a lot from that one activity, more because I trained myself to be the person I wanted to be. At first I felt a little sad and angry, and had I let this behavior continue, I probably would've never walked away with the value I have in my life right now.

Explanation:
Keep it positive while discussing some negative parts. Don’t try to do all positive; you’re not fooling anyone! We’re all human, and there are plenty of examples both positive and negative if you dig deep enough.
2Step Two2. Job interview questions and answers about previous workplace (usually negative connotation)

Why did you leave your last job?

“Well to tell you the truth, I enjoyed my last job. I really made a good decision to be there. I loved working with other great talented people and I loved learning as much as I could. I learned a ton about how to treat customers and go about creating successful marketing and our sales process. But, I wanted to try something new. The business became very routine; I didn’t feel the passion and the challenge anymore. But I’ll always remember what I learned there and I continue to keep in touch with some of my bosses and my coworkers.”

Explanation: This keeps it positive. I also listed some skills that you learned. The only negative part was that I was little bored. I didn’t say anything bad about my boss or that I wanted more money.
3Step Three3. Job interview questions and answers directed toward something negative about yourself:

What are your weaknesses?

“Hard question! What do I do! I want to be honest, but I don’t want the interviewers to think I’m a total fool. Should I flip it around into a positive like most people say?”

Don't try to flip the question around. Don't worry that much about revealing something bad about yourself.

We gotta remember that job interviewers are humans too and they want to connect. Just answer the question plainly and simply.

Here's the answer I've been given in the past:
"My greatest weakness is that I'm not a very detail oriented person. I'm more of a big picture guy."
"For example, in a project at school it was a two-part marketing presentation. One part was finances and the other was the whole plan. I had a friend that was really good at the “numbers” and other details and I was good at the big picture plan. We divided the work accordingly, but then I asked him to teach me about the finance part and I taught him about the plan."

Explanation:
This shows that were you a good leader, by helping your team and working efficiently. But, most importantly, you really want to improve yourself and learn because you took the time to ask for help from the people that know what their doing while mentoring them in what you're good at.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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