Tough Interview Questions

The $55,000 Question…

Tell Me About Yourself
- The trick to this question is… to give the interviewer a good idea of what your professional life is like. If you find yourself rambling about your personal life and your blogs and your cats… you haven’t answered the question correctly. About as personal as you should get is your education and possibly a hobby that relates to your professional life.
What is your biggest weakness?
- The trick to this question is… to have the answer prepared ahead of time. Everyone has at least one weakness. The real question being asked is – are you going to be honest with me and tell me that you are flawed, and what are you doing about your flaw? So, your weakness needs to be something that you have addressed or are addressing at the moment.
What was the most frustrating part about your previous job?
- The trick to this question is… this is a red-flag question. Remember, always answer positively. “Well, I really enjoyed the people” (read: they were complete asshats). “My work was rewarding, but I did have a very difficult team member that I had a hard time getting along with. But, in the end, it turned out alright, as we were able to work out our differences.” (read: I got his ass fired.) If you answer negatively about your previous job or employer, you are not speaking well of yourself – you’re a gossip and you will do the same thing to this person after you leave this company… not a good thing for your interviewer to be thinking.
Tell me about a time you worked on a team with someone you didn’t like, and how you dealt with it.
- The trick to this question is… Another red flag question. Can you deal with adversity? There’s a lot of crappy people in the world – and since life is 10% what happens and 90% how you deal with it, you are hosed if you don’t come up with a circular answer that somehow ends in, “And we lived happily ever after.”
Tell me about a time you worked on a team.
- The trick to this question is… Okay, kindof vague. It’s alright – what they’re looking for here (and the others like it) is for you to display your organizational skills and your analytical skills of telling a story. And probably just probing for a few achievements that weren’t on your resume or cover letter.
Why do you think you will be successful here?
- The trick to this question is… this is a skills and personality question – your skills will help you succeed, your personality will help you play well with others. Use your strengths and skills to your benefit by applying them to needs of the job.
What do you find most frustrating?
- The trick to this question is… red flag. This indicates how you deal with adversity. If you don’t answer positively – that is, turning negatives into positives, optimistically, you will fail this question. Frustrations are temporary road blocks. If you vent or hold grudges, you’re going to answer this question incorrectly. Employers do not want to hire someone who holds grudges and vents their toxic waste all over their office.
Describe your worst job.
- The trick to this question is… red flag. Everyone has a worst job. The trick here is to guide your employer to the realization that you made the best out of a bad situation and tried to go above and beyond what the expectations were of you in that situation.
Convince me to hire you.
- The trick to this question is… well, gee Gina. A simple, “Because I could really use the job,” isn’t going to cut it here. You have to pull out all the stops, explain your skills succinctly and tie your strengths into a concrete answer to explain just why you kick so much more ass than the other people they will be interviewing.