How to answer typical job interview questions
What are the most commonly asked job interview questions that you can prepare for? Taking the time to get interview-ready is your main advantage.
The main tips to prepare for a job interview are as follows:
- Research. When reading about the company you’ll be interviewed for, pay attention to which soft and hard skills they are looking for. Go through your resume and find examples to demonstrate that you are a good match for the position.
- Practise. The more the better. It is better to record yourself answering questions, so you can watch the recordings later and see where you can make improvements.
- Examples. Find examples from your previous work experience that you can use as back up when you answer the common job interview questions.
Behavioral job interview questions
When preparing for job interview questions, pay special attention to situational questions – you may be asked to talk about how you would approach a hypothetical situation at work.
Employers look to get an understanding of your behavior in certain circumstances, so these questions will be challenging but are a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your effectiveness and skills.
For example, you may be asked to talk about a stressful and challenging situation from your past and explain how you handled it.
Job seekers often want to know in advance how to answer job interview questions. There are two job interview tips you can use to answer behavioral job interview questions:
- The CAR method refers to the Context, Action, Result structure: you provide the background of the situation you were in, your thoughts and actions in that situation, and explain the results you achieved.
- The STAR principle is similar, it is about the Situation, Task, Action, Result. Here you may include the specific tasks required to resolve the situation, what you did and what was the outcome.
Whatever approach you choose, try to provide information on how your employer and business benefited from your actions.
Tough job interview questions
You might be asked several questions that are tricky and not as straightforward as they may seem at first. The interviewer wants to find out more about your reaction and way of thinking.
When answering complicated job interview questions, try to provide specific examples based on your experience, and focus on explaining how it shaped you as an employee.
Here are some samples of tough interview questions:
- The most popular and loved job interview question is “What are your weaknesses?”. The best way to answer it is to be positive and honest. Pick a weakness that will show your personality focusing on solutions, and describe how you handled it.
- Situational questions are also the most challenging types of questions. Recruiters might ask you to describe a situation that required you to find an effective solution and how you managed it. For example: “Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss?” or “How would you deal with an angry or irate customer?” Or more generically “Tell me how you handled a difficult situation?”
- Feedback questions require you to discuss how your previous managers, team leaders, or colleagues might describe you and may sound like this: “If I called your boss right now and asked them what is an area that you could improve on, what would they say?” or “What would your direct reports say about you?”
How to prepare for a video job interview
You may think you don’t need to prepare as much for an online or video job interview. However, this is a common mistake.
Human perception consists of many things: how you look, what you are wearing, your posture and gestures, eye contact, your manner of speech, smell, voice, the way you move when you walk into the room, etc.
Video auditioning is even harder, as interviewers will pay closer attention to assess your answers more than anything else in your appearance. That is why it is crucial to be well prepared to answer commonly asked job interview questions during your video audition. Follow our blog to get regular job interview tips to bring your career development to a whole new level.