—- ** FOR NEW STUDENTS ** —————————————- ———–
- What industry do you work in and what is your role?
- What are your responses in your role / position?
- Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
- How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
- What is the Minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
- How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
- What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?
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General discussion about your workweek:
- Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
- Anything of interest happening?
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https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/100-potential-interview-questions
Script
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Kaley had waited a long time to get into this interview. She’d gotten through the initial phone screenings, and the meeting with HR had gone very well. Shanna, the recruiter for the role, was very enthusiastic about Kaley’s background. After the interview, Kaley had a nagging question. Thinking back on her conversation with Shanna and others, she realized that recruiters are almost always enthusiastic and encouraging. If there was something she was missing, Kaley wondered, would the recruiter really tell her?
Or, would the recruiter even know those details? A recruiter might be busy celebrating your strengths but they won’t tell you your weaknesses. The only real way to find out was to meet with the hiring manager – or, in this case, the hiring team. Kaley had obviously made it to the next step. Putting her suspicions aside, she began to prepare.
As Kaley’s coach (and by the way, that’s not her real name) I jumped in for a quick discussion to review some of the 7 deadly sins – the unforgivable omissions and missteps that can turn a great candidate into a question mark. The good news is: these sins don’t have to be deadly, and new choices are always available. If you know where to look.
- Pride Goes Before A Fall – in a career workshop, I asked an intrepid gent to tell me how he might open up the job interview. Without hesitation, he stood up and said, “I’m nine shades of awesome. Which color do you want first?” It’s hard to show how you can be of service to an employer if you’re beating on your chest and falling in love with the smell of your own after shave. The antidote to overconfidence? Service. Ask yourself which is more important: how you feel about your background, or how your skills can help your next employer to succeed? There’s a balancing act between confidence and comfort – make sure you bring the thing that matters most to the conversation.
- The Trick Question Trap – the biggest trick question in any interview is usually the first one: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? At first glance, this invitation to an elevator pitch looks like you are being asked to talk about yourself. But that’s never the whole story. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” is this question’s clever disguise: “Why don’t you tell me what you might be able to do for me?” It’s no secret that we all have our own self-interests at heart – it’s our survival instinct at work. And, by extension, interviewers are concerned about the survival of the company. Focus your story not just on what you’ve done and who you are, but what you can do for the company because of your experience.
- The Demon of Defensiveness – Rajid was a super-smart technical wizard, being looked at for one of the top spots inside IT at a multi-national software company. But he was getting frustrated in his interview. The Vice President of Marketing was prying into analytics and wanted to understand a key component of gathering big data. How would Rajid build the infrastructure to support these new marketing initiatives? After a barrage of follow-up questions, Rajid was frustrated, and got defensive. He shook his head. “Well…you just don’t get it,” he said. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what the company said when he asked for the job.
- Digital Devils – I’ll never forget the time I was delivering a keynote presentation at Clemson University. In front of a room of 300 students, I was making a super-important “Big Moment” kind of point. I took a perfectly timed pause and the audience leaned in for the all-important payoff. Inside that silence, a phone started to ring. The laughter overtook the room faster than a forest fire. I watched from the stage, as my big point turned into big laughs. Because the ringing phone belonged to me. Don’t let your phone become an unwanted distraction in the interview – or your next big presentation. Make sure your next employer has your undivided attention, and they just might give you theirs.
- Speak No Evil – when you sling mud at your last employer or boss, it only gets you dirty. If you need to talk about how you were fired, or left your last gig under duress, take some time to consider how to unpack that story for your interviewer. Make sure that respect always has a seat at the table, even when talking about tough times (or difficult people).
- Sliding Into Sloth – perhaps the single greatest weakness is not learning and growing from your past experiences. Are your career difficulties isolated incidents, or an unshakeable pattern of behavior? It’s not a deadly sin if you’re not tall enough to reach the top shelf in the warehouse. But, if you don’t go get the ladder, or call the guy with the forklift, what does that say about you? What the ancient Greeks called “sloth” we now know as laziness. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has areas where they come up short. What’s the story of how you reached out to others, or gained the training you needed, and didn’t stop in the face of obstacles?
- Penalized By Overtime – how long does it take you to answer an interviewer’s question? Reality-TV producer and Hollywood pitch guru, Brant Pinvidic, says you need to follow the three minute rule. Even a situational interview question can be answered in three minutes, by following a few simple guidelines. Of course it’s hard to boil down a lifetime of experience into a three-minute answer – but it’s not hard at all, if the interview isn’t an interrogation. It’s a conversation.
The conversation is the key – creating the back and forth dialogue that is honest about your mistakes, but avoids the 7 Deadly Sins. By taking time to focus on your solution, and on how you can help your next employer, you’re definitely looking in the right direction.
Discussion
1. Talk about the last interview you had, what was it like?
2. Have you ever interviewed someone for a job? if so what were the answers were you looking for?
3. Have you heard any strange stories about interviews. in your company or others? perhaps even in the news?
Interview questions cont.
15. “How will my leadership responsibilities and performance be measured? By whom?”
16. “Are there any weaknesses in the department that you are working to improve?”
17. “What new endeavours is the company currently undertaking?”
18. “What goals or objectives need to be achieved in the next six months? Next year?”
19. “What areas of the job would you like to see improvement in with regard to how the person who most recently performed these duties?”
20. “Describe the atmosphere of the office.” (With this question, you are looking for clues on politic turf wars, pressure and stress level.)
21. “What types of people seem to excel here?”
22. “Is the company quick or slow to adopt new technology?”
23. “How would you describe the politics of this organization?”
24. “Where is the person who previously held this job?” (If fired, ask why; if promoted, where he or she went; if it is a newly created job, get a better idea of why it was added.)
25. “How does the company promote personal and professional growth?”
Keywords
- screenings = the evaluation or investigation of something as part of a methodical survey, to assess suitability for a particular role or purpose.
- nagging question = ersistently painful or worrying
- omissions = the action of excluding or leaving out someone or something.
- missteps = a mistake or blunder
- [responsivevoice voice = "US English Female" buttontext = ""]intrepid = fearless
- hesitation / doubt / pause
- beating on your chest = arrogance
- antidote / cure
- glance
- at heart = in one’s real nature, in contrast to how one may appear.
- Defensiveness = very anxious to challenge or avoid criticism.
- wizard / expert / highly skilled
- prying = excessively interested in a person’s private affairs; too inquisitive.
- barrage = bombard (someone) with questions, criticisms, complaints, etc.
- Coincidentally = happening or existing at the same time / happening by chance
- undivided attention = 100% / total attention
- sling mud = sling mud at / Insult or discredit someone
- duress = threats, violence, constraints, or other action used to coerce someone into doing something against their will or better judgement / Force
- unshakeable = (of a belief, feeling, or opinion) strongly felt and unable to be changed.
- they come up short = fail to reach a goal or standard.
- reached out = to offer help or support to (someone)
- Penalized = given a penalty / put at an unfair disadvantage.
- boil down = the most important or the most basic aspect of it.
