Interview questions
Unless you have a crystal ball you’re not going to know what questions you’ll be asked, but you can have a good guess because you know what the job is. There’s a big chance that you’ll be asked some of the following:
About the job
Why do you want the job?
What makes you the right person for the job?
You can break these down and answer them with the following:
Your personal interest: how the job matches your career intentions and what appeals to you about it.
experience: the links with experience gained from previous and current jobs
skills you have already which are needed for the job
About your career
What are you doing at the moment?
What job did you enjoy most/least and why?
Why did you leave each job?
What are your career plans?
About your skills
Which skills are relevant to this job?
What extra skills do you have?
Which skills do you like most?
Which skills are you missing?
If you don’t have a particular skill, show that you’ve got similar skills and that can easily learn.
About you
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Are you ambitious?
What are your interests?
Your answers to these questions are the stage of the interview when you need to draw on what you have picked up about the job and the company (from your research and from the interview so far). For example if the interviewer is obviously looking for a team player then let them know that this is one of your strengths.
When you’re talking about your weaknesses, be honest but be careful. Don’t say ‘I’m never on time and I’m disorganised’, but you could say ‘I’m a perfectionist and I like to do things well, it can sometimes mean that I take a lot of time on things and this is an area where I could improve’. This is obviously a weakness because often people need work done quickly but it’s not a bad thing because you clearly care about your work and like to take the time to make sure things are right.
When you’re talking about your interests, you need to be up to date. So, if you’ve said you like reading , be ready to talk about the book you’re reading now and what you’ve enjoyed most over the past year. In this part of the interview it may become more like a conversation, but you still need to be careful – if you give the impression that you’re out clubbing til 3 each morning, an interviewer will have doubts about your alertness at work at 9am!