During a job interview, you’ll be asked a variety of questions, some of which will be more difficult than others. The difficult questions are designed to elicit telling answers about your potential value as an employee, and how you’d respond to challenging situations. By understanding the answers to the hardest job interview questions ahead of time, you’ll have a much better chance of making a lasting impression. LD Products is here to help. In this article, we give you advice on how to answer some of the most difficult job interview questions.
1. “Tell me about yourself”
This is usually the first question one will be asked in an interview and one of the most important. Since interviewer(s) usually form an opinion about the candidate minutes within the interview, it’s important to give a carefully crafted answer that reflects your past accomplishments and progress. Don’t take this question to mean they want to hear about your life story. Instead, discuss you education, work history, your most recent career experience and future goals you hope to accomplish.
2. “What is your greatest weakness?”
If you get asked the dreaded question about your biggest weakness, you shouldn’t necessarily focus on anything that will be required to do the job you’re interviewing for. If you were interviewing for a job that required you to give weekly group presentations, for example, don’t say that your greatest weakness is “talking in front of groups of people.” Instead, focus either on a non-essential skill to the position that you’re applying for or focus on something that you’ve improved at a previous position that you’ve held with a different company.
3. “How would your coworkers describe you?”
This question isn’t just to gauge your personality and work ethic, but also how you work within a team environment. To be better equipped with an immediate response to this question, and to improve in any area you may be lacking so you can answer honestly, it’s a good idea to ask your colleagues and supervisors how they would describe you.
4. “Why were you laid off?”
This has become an increasingly common question as the job economy continues to struggle with pre-recession rates of employment. Be sure to point this out. But be honest. Often times a company won’t specify why an employee was laid off. If this is the case for you, let them know that you aren’t completely sure why you were let go, but are certain that economy contributed to the decision in some fashion. It’s a good idea to have some impressive personal stats at the ready to convince potential employers that you weren’t let go because of your lack of skill.
5. “Are you willing to take a salary cut?”
Again, a tough economy will lead to tough and delicate questions such as this. A company may have no choice but to offer you less than what you were hoping for. If this happens, a smart course of action is to propose accepting the salary based on the condition that it’s revisited after a few months. This will give you time to prove to your employer that you’re worth it and they’ll respect you for being willing to prove yourself before being rewarded.
Remember, an interview is all about selling yourself. You want to provide evidence as to why you’re the best choice for the position. Stay away from broad generalizations, or over-selling the pros of your personality. Rather, give concrete facts as to what you did and how it benefited your past employer. Write out which work wins you’d like to highlight. Ideally, you’d like these to be individual wins as well as team-oriented wins to show that you are both self-sufficient and a team player. By doing this, in conjunction with thoughtful responses to slightly uncomfortable questions at the ready, you’ll have the confidence and ease that employers love to see in a job candidate.
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