25 Interview Questions

Whether it’s your first interview for your first job or another interview after years of working, going to an interview is nerve wrecking.

To have been given an interview, you either presented well in your resume or have been recommended to the position. In both cases, you can take some confidence from the fact that you were short listed from potentially hundreds of applicants.

In order to give yourself the best presentation, considering what will be discussed at the interview can help. Even better is to do some role playing with a friend playing the role of an interviewer.

Take the time to really consider the following questions and how you could answer them to best effect. Even if they don’t come up in your interview, maybe you will learn some thing useful for yourself!

• What is your greatest strength?
• What is your greatest weakness?
• How do you organise yourself?
• What are the important elements of customer service? (and don’t ignore this question just because you aren’t going to be a salesperson)
• Give an example of when you had to negotiate with a difficult customer
• Can you do {insert relevant skill}? Practise this question for a skill you can’t do …
• Where do you expect to be in five years time?
• Why did you leave your last position? (keep it positive)
• What was best about your previous job(s)?
• What did you least like about your previous job?
• What salary are you after?
• What appeals to you about this job? Or Why are you applying for this job?
• Tell us about yourself
• What were you doing during this gap in your resume?
• You changed careers; why?
• How do you handle stress and deadlines?
• How do you go about making serious decisions?
• What is your biggest achievement in life?
• How do you manage multiple tasks at once?
• Why did you decide on this career/industry?
• What is your ideal job?
• Show an example of working with a colleague you didn’t like
• How do you characterise your working (or supervisory) style?
• What professional organizations do you belong to? How actively do you participate in them?
• Are you computer literate? How competent are you in (software type)?

Some of those questions need to be answered carefully so that you are remaining positive and constructive.

For instance, an accountant I know answers that his greatest weakness is being too pedantic about details; of course, employers want an accountant to be details conscious so this puts him in a good light.

With thought and planning, you can turn hard questions to your advantage.