Responding to Tricky Interview Questions
We have all been there – sitting nervously across the desk from a hiring manager who just asked an interview question that you have no idea how to answer. What do you do in this situation? Do you A. Stumble through it by rambling on and on about anything that pops into your head and remotely fits the topic of the question. Or, B. Relax, take a deep breath, and proceed with a well-crafted, logical answer. For all you A.’s, stop thinking: ‘B. would be nice, but yeah right!’ and read below for proven does and don’ts for successfully answer tricky interview questions.
DO:
Study the job description. A good interview is based on the required knowledge, skills, and abilities needed in order for successful job performance in this role. Meaning that the best way to anticipate tricky interview questions is to have a clear understanding of what is required in this particular job. For example, if the job description frequently mentions working on a team, chances are you will be asked about your previous team experiences. Here’s a harder one: If the job description consistently states phrases like: ‘fast-paced environment’, ‘fast learner’, and ‘works well with complexity’, they are likely looking for someone who has a proven track record for meeting tight deadlines and who has a strong tolerance for ambiguity. This means you should go into the interview with ready-made examples of times when you worked well under pressure and successfully navigated through ambiguous situations.
Buy time to coherently gather your thoughts. It is natural to be surprised at some interview questions. After all, you are not given the list to study in advance! Human nature’s seemingly natural way to buy time in order to gather thoughts is by falling back on improper speech: ‘um…well, let me see here…um, you know…like…this one time…’, and before you know it, the first line of your interview answer is complete gibberish. So, what do you do – it’s simple, replace that word vomit with a regurgitation of the interviewer’s question. For example,
INTERVIEWER: “Tell me about a time when you solved a challenging problem using an innovative strategy.”
YOU: “A specific time when I had to solve a challenging problem using an innovative strategy was….”. Rephrasing the interview question in this manner will buy you just enough time to think through your experiences and identify a good example – without the gibberish.
Use negative interview questions as a way to showcase what you have learned. Often some of the trickiest interview questions are negative in nature, like: “Describe a time when you failed,” or “Have you ever missed a due date?” When you hit this in an interview it can be frustrating – Aren’t you nervous enough as it is? Now, they want to talk about your mistakes?! The savvy career girl will take those career lows and flip them into career highs by switching the central thesis from the admittance of failure to what she learned and how she used this knowledge in the future.
DON'T:
Give a short answer. Instead, tell a story in every interview answer. The thing with stories is that they are more than just a beginning, middle, and an end – they describe a problem, work through the development of a solution, reveal an outcome, and highlight a lesson learned. Good interview answers tell a complete story, beginning with how you were thrown into a highly complex project mid-stream, worked quickly to get up to speed, presented a fabulous idea on how to improve efficiency, and your idea resulted in project completion 2 weeks ahead of schedule.
Be Negative. About your last job/project/boss/business trip/[insert your least favorite thing about your current position here]…Don’t be negative about anything in the interview. ‘Don’t they want to hear how crappy my last job was so they know how much I want to come here?’ NO! Being negative in a job interview can harm you in two ways: First, by donning a negative attitude, the interviewer will leave with the perspective that you are a generally negative person – and no one in a hiring situation envisions their ideal job candidate as negative. Second, chances are, your interviewer or someone in his/her network knows someone from the company you are complaining about… Or, worse, is good friends with your previous boss. Not a situation you want to get yourself into.
Take credit for team accomplishments. With modern work increasingly built around the team structure, much of your previous work experience, and especially, your large-scale projects are likely at least in part a team effort. It is never ok to take full credit for a team effort. So, the next time you find yourself in an interview about to describe your ‘most challenging project’ or ‘the accomplishment you are most proud’, first acknowledge the team setting, and then concentrate your answer around the parts of the project you lead, how you influenced team dynamics for the better, and highlight how your efforts impacted the final product.
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