At least once during your job search, you’ll probably come up against a difficult interview question—and a challenging interviewer. Sometimes the question is hard because it probes at a sore spot you don’t want to discuss, such as “Why did you get fired from your last job?”
Other times, the interviewer might make an unexpected transition: “You vacationed in Guatemala? Me too!” And finally, some questions just come out of left field: “If you were a tree, what kind would you be?”
At GetFive, we’ve heard them all—the good, the bad, the ugly, and even the “what the heck.” We’ve learned that successfully dealing with difficult job interview questions requires more than just quick thinking and preparation. You need to have effective strategies for answering the questions and managing the interviewers who pose them. A single blog post isn’t enough space to give you comprehensive insight, so this blog will be the first in a series. Here, we’ll talk a bit about generalities, and in future posts we’ll drill down on specifics, wrapping up with sample questions and strategies for responses.
Managing the interview and interviewer
Tough questions can happen to anyone, but they’re much less likely to derail you if you’re prepared for the interview. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should be running the interview, but you do need to be in complete control of your responses.
The best way to stay in control is to prepare and practice. Enlist a friend to help you do a mock interview with both common and unusual questions. Practice your responses. Take notes using your favorite note-taking tool—a smartphone app or even an old-fashioned note card. Read up on the company where you’ll be interviewing, and if possible, check out the interviewer’s professional online profile to get a better understanding of who he or she is, as well as what questions might come up.
Stay positive, no matter what.
Remain positive and on point, even if an interviewer asks you to critique your former boss. Understand what he’s really trying to learn—which is not if your last boss was a jerk, but if you are. Saying negative things leaves a negative impression. You don’t—and shouldn’t—prevaricate to appear positive, but spin is perfectly fine. Instead of saying your boss didn’t have much time for you, why not say that your boss gave you a great deal of independence, which helped you refine your decision-making skills?
Say just enough and no more.
It’s important to answer questions thoroughly but succinctly, especially when they’re difficult. The stress of trying to formulate a good answer may make you nervous enough to begin babbling. Resist. The more time you spend on answering a bad question, the more weight you give it in the interviewer’s mind. Be brief and polite, and when you’re done answering the question you didn’t want to answer, get the conversation back on track to what really matters: how your skills and experience can help the company.
Remember, any question that takes the interview off track, and you off course, is a bad question. Prepare in advance with strategies to help you get the interview back on track.
Next installment: Managing the interviewer when he’s disorganized, rude or just plain clueless.
