Memorising all your best and worst qualities, practicing over scenarios and rehearsing your experience, it’s more daunting than being a teen trying to get into a club with your older sibling’s ID.
While some of us might think we’re absolute pros, job interviews can be completely nerve-wracking.
You can practise as much as you want but sometimes they’ll just present you with a situation you hadn’t expected – like Steve Jobs’ ‘beer test’.
You also need to be on the lookout for 'red flag' interview questions, while handling questions designed to trip you up.
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However, to help quell some of those nerves and get you game fit, a recruiter has shared the five questions ‘everyone should be ready to answer’ when going into a job interview.
Bryan Creely gives career advice on YouTube via A Life After Layoff and encourages job seekers to ‘learn the concept of storytelling’ as he says hiring managers ‘like people who tell stories’.
"Tell me about yourself"
The recruiter says this is ‘almost guaranteed to be asked’.
“Basically what the interviewer is doing is they want you to give context to why you’re even sitting in the room,” he explains.
Creely adds that they’ve got your CV so it’s your chance to put a little ‘flavour’ into you background and take the opportunity to share why you’re the best fit – not list off how many brothers or sisters you’ve got.
"Why do you want to work here?"
“I recommend you be honest. Hopefully, you do have a career path and this job fits nicely into it, because it’s going to be a lot easier to sell your motivation if it’s actually sincere,” the recruiter says.
He encourages making sure what you’re saying is related to the job and to try and ‘pull in something unique about the company’ to make yourself stand out.
"What’s your greatest weakness/strength?"
Obviously, another very classic question that can be pretty tedious to answer.
Creely reckons people overthink this and shouldn’t look for things that ‘paint you in a bad light’.
“I recommend that you be honest, think about a real weakness that you actually have,” he said. “What was the impact of that weakness on your work and if you can share a solid example of how you learn from that, it’s going to go a long way to solidifying you as a top candidate.”
And for strength, look for the thing that’s most relevant to the job you’re interviewing for.
"What’s your greatest accomplishment?"
Creely thinks you should be able to ‘clearly articulate’ this and advises using ‘some strategy’.
“Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes and think of what’s the biggest accomplishment that’s related to the job that you’re applying to,” he says.
"What are your salary expectations?"
Obviously, if you’ve applied for a job you should ‘absolutely be prepared for’ this question as it’s evidently very important.
“The number that you give at this point in the interviewing process will typically follow you throughout and it’s hard to back off of the number so we want to make sure that we’ve got good strategy,” Creely says.
He recommends knowing your minimum salary, doing your salary research and then ask the interviewer if they’re willing to share what they’re willing to give – that way you can negotiate and look around a little more.
As a nifty trick, if the interviewer refuses to share what the company would be willing to pay, he recommends using the phrase 'other opportunities that I'm considering are paying between...' and then 'insert the number that you need to see in order to feel satisfied'.
Jess Battison