Interview questions to set you up for success
Reading time: 10 Minutes
We’ve all been there - you’re facing your first interview after being out of the job market for several years, either due to being really happy at your current company or feeling too stuck (read comfortable) to reach for change. Or you’ve recently made an addition to your family, and your current employer is on the opposite end of supportive when it comes to Motherhood and helping women excel in their careers. Or inevitable economic conditions, along with severe organisational mismanagement, have meant that you too can now don the bright green “open to work” banner on LinkedIn. Don’t worry, though, because however you find yourself in this situation is not where you’ll be for long after reading this article.
I’ve had my fair share of job-hunting seasons - some out of pure necessity, others due to curiosity and seeing what’s out there. Applying for jobs is a full-time job in and of itself, especially when you fill out a profile listing the exact information your carefully crafted CV already contains - I see you, Workday, and I hate you. Let’s say you persevered with tedious applications, and a potential employer finally invited you to interview - now what?
Finessing your interview skills
I had a colleague once who told me that I needed to stop feeling guilty every time I went for an interview without the outright intention to actually take the job once it’s potentially offered to me. Instead, he posed the situation in such a way that I left with an understanding that interviewing is a skill, and each one that comes my way is a new opportunity to finesse my interview skills and improve how I articulate my answers and sell myself. It’s also an opportunity to network and meet new people - as with the “Six degrees of Separation” theory stating that you’re only ever six people away from meeting those individuals you genuinely admire/wish to work with etc. if only you dared to put yourself out there. As with dating, you never know who you’ll get to share a table with through interviewing. I’ve had two occasions where I happened to meet people I deeply admired and quoted in some academic work I’d done in an interview setting - yes, it adds to the nerves, but it also makes for superb storytelling. Throughout the various job-hunting and interviewing-to-build-skill seasons of my career, I’ve compiled a list of some of the obvious questions you’ll get asked, along with how to best answer these. You probably won’t get asked all of these questions in one sitting. Instead, they’ll be spread out over multiple rounds of interviews and possible case studies. For the sake of organisation, I’ve divided them into the four following categories:
Self-focused
Organisation focused
Operational and job-focused
Candidate questions
Self-focused
Self-focused questions are self-explanatory, as they're the types of questions hiring managers and recruiters typically ask to get a better feel for who you are as a person. These are the cliche “Name your greatest strengths and weaknesses” (which I’ve personally never been asked) or “How would you describe yourself?” which they can typically already glean from your CV or cover letter. Others include questions like:
What 5 words would you use to best describe yourself and why?
Give us an overview of previous work experiences and highlight one moment where you failed - what did you learn? Highlight one moment you excelled - what did you learn?
What do you bring to the table over other candidates? I'm not too fond of this question. Still, I’ve learnt that it’s more to see how you reason and if you put others down in order to hype yourself up versus purely talking about why you’d be the better candidate due to, i.e., expert knowledge of XY and Z, or having connections in a specific industry etc.
Organisation and job-focused
This set of questions is typically asked to see how much due diligence you did in researching the company and its values, i.e., to gauge whether you read some press releases and executive reports (if available) and found their website and profiles on Social Media platforms, etc. Questions typically asked in this category can include:
Why do you want to work for us? Here, you can list anything from the culture through to flexible working hours, benefits, the company mission, the job role itself, etc.
Which company value do you most resonate with and why? This is asked to see whether you’d be a culture fit.
What’s one responsibility in your current role that you’d like to not do in the future and why?
Name one time you made a mistake during work and what the impact was? How did you respond, and what have you learnt from it?
What inspires you to get out of bed in the morning? Or I’ve also been asked, “What gives you energy?” - don’t say redbull or coffee; it’s not meant to be that literal.
Why are you in the market for a new position?
What are your professional goals for the next five years? Where do you see yourself? Here, you can mention anything from being in a more senior position with more responsibility, completing a few professional development courses, building influential connections with multiple cross-product or industry stakeholders, etc. - anything that shows advancement and some semblance of ambition.
Which skills would you like to develop in the future?
Tell us about a project you led/were a part of that you thought was successful - which factors made it successful?
Interpersonal and soft-skills-focused
These questions are typically posed in a round two or three interview after your ability to do the job has been established, and they’re normally asked to get a feel for whether you’ll fit in with the team and the greater organisational culture. These questions could include:
What would your coworkers say about you?
What experience do you have in dealing directly with clients?
What is the first thing you’ll do should you be the successfully appointed person for this role? This can be anything from “I’m going to do a course on building dashboards in Tableau since I don’t know the platform yet. Or I will lean into the induction process and see which recommendations I can make for improving the company’s operational or revenue-driving strategy.”
Give an example of a time you disagreed with a decision leadership made? Why did you disagree, and how did you handle it and proceed with the relationship?
What role do you usually take on in a group setting?
If you were to give your current line manager a performance appraisal, what would you tell them to improve on, and what are they doing well?
Candidate questions
Often, candidates don’t ask the interviewers any questions back to ascertain whether the environment they’ll potentially be entering into is a healthy one. We also tend to forget that signing a contract to work is a literal trade exchange - you agree to trade your time, skill and expertise to fulfil a role within an organisation, and the company, in turn, agrees to remunerate you for said time, skill and expertise. If we remove the emotion, it becomes a straightforward equation. Here are some questions you can ask to gauge whether the role and organisation would be a fit for you:
What’s your favourite part of working here?
What’s the most challenging part of working here?
What’s the average tenure of people at this company? If it’s less than three years and the company is established (over 15 years old) - Run, don’t walk.
Which stakeholders are the most challenging to work with, and what relationship do you currently have with them?
Technical or Operations-based questions to understand whether the company uses Windows and Teams over Gmail, Macs and Slack, for instance - the difference is huge if you’re used to the latter.
Do you have a budget for the training and development of employees? If so, what is it, and how will I potentially benefit from it?
How committed are you to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and what initiatives have you implemented to address unconscious biases and create a more inclusive working environment?
When was the last time an employee mentioned ways to improve organisational performance or processes? How was it handled, and was it actually implemented?
What is the typical feedback process and the hiring manager’s management style? I.e., do you wait for feedback once every six months, or is it an ongoing initiative that comes from both sides?
What support is available for mental health or burnt-out employees?
What would success look like in this role within the first 90 days?
To what extent do you think my overall profile and skills align with the requirements of this role? Is there anything that you’re concerned about? This is a final opportunity for you to ease any fears the hiring manager and recruiter might have concerning offering you the job.
A strategy for crafting more impactful answers
If you’re like me and you always have seven thousand tabs open in your brain with music coming from somewhere, answering interview questions concisely can prove to be a challenge. Thank goodness for STAR - an acronym for Situation, Task, Action and Results - it’s a framework to help you answer questions more effectively to portray how badass and capable you really are. For instance, you’re asked, “Name one time you made a mistake during work and tell us the impact? How did you respond, and what have you learnt from it?” Using STAR, an answer from personal experience can look like this:
SITUATION: I was asked to compile a report for The Economist's CMO within a week using unfamiliar data.
TASK: The report had to include an analysis of how their portfolio was performing and how many new email subscribers they had gained during the period.
ACTION: My report accidentally included the wrong amount of new email subscribers, which the CMO picked up and inquired about. I hadn’t previously worked with email subscriber data and didn’t ask the necessary clarifying questions to understand which numbers to use.
RESULT: I replied my apologies to the CMO along with the correct numbers, and I had a chat with the email marketing analyst to make sure I understood the data and which columns to use for reporting in the future. I also spoke to my line manager about getting a QA process in place for the future in order to avoid this from happening again.
Remember, you’re a human, and we’ve all made mistakes. The goal of asking these kinds of questions is to receive authentic responses from individuals, so always be honest, and most importantly - be yourself. If they don’t like it - it’s not for you.
Final thoughts for interview success:
Research shows that even in the year of our Lord 2023, the majority of men (53%) still don’t believe that women should earn as much as men, and it’s been reported that men negotiate for higher salaries in their job offers 30% more often than women. We’re all aware of the gender pay gap and that women work for free for the first 41 days of every new calendar year. Therefore, I want to encourage you to always negotiate the job offer they give you, even if it leaves you breathless with sparkles in your eyes, and your new employer is committed to gender pay equity. NEGOTIATE - the worst thing you can get is a “no”, and then you can still have peace of mind that you at least tried.
Even though I’ve probably had close to 40 interviews throughout my 10-year career, I still get nervous, my palms sweat, and my mouth gets dry like the Namib desert. I combat this by doing box breathing - four breaths in, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, and do nothing for four counts - repeat until the palm sweatiness dissipates. An old frolleague (friend and colleague) also once told me to always ask for a glass of water or bring a water bottle into the interview so that I can give myself a tiny break to catch my breath or buy time to think of an answer when I’m drawing a blank. Finally, Amy Cuddy’s Power Pose from her 2016 TED Talk never fails to fill me with the necessary confidence - check it out here.
Happy interviewing!
References:
Birt, 2023. How to use the STAR interview response technique. Indeed. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/how-to-use-the-star-interview-response-technique
Morse, 2013. The Science Behind Six Degrees. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2003/02/the-science-behind-six-degrees
Pew Research Center. 2013. Chapter 2: Equal treatment for men and women. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/12/11/chapter-2-equal-treatment-for-men-and-women/
Resume Builder. 2023. Women were a third less likely than men to negotiate pay in the past two years. Intimidation stopped many from trying. https://www.resumebuilder.com/women-were-a-third-less-likely-than-men-to-negotiate-pay-in-past-two-years/
