The Secret Meanings Behind Four Of The Most Common
Interview Questions
These common questions may feel clichéd, but there’s a reason why
recruiters keep asking them.
Some interview questions lead to eye rolls by just thinking about
them: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” “What’s your biggest
weakness?” When you’re preparing for a job interview, it can be hard to know
how to avoid giving trite answers to these equally trite questions. But one
solution is simply to know what hiring managers and recruiters are actually
trying to learn by asking them in the first place. So Fast Company hit
up a few experts to find out.
“TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF”
Hidden Meaning: “I’m throwing you a softball and letting you get
comfortable.”
Matt Hughes, head of talent at the career marketplace Hired, has
simple advice for this one: Don’t overthink it–it’s just an ice breaker.
Sometimes, he says, a hiring manager might be “trying to better understand what
motivates a candidate to succeed in their personal lives and how that will
translate into being part of the company’s mission,” but it’s often not even
that purposeful. As LinkedIn’s VP of Global Talent Acquisition Brendan Browne
puts it, this is an “okay warm-up question at best.”
“Getting people comfortable is key,” Browne explains, pointing out
that “companies that try to create a tense situation or [use] an intense
questioning style” aren’t likely to get a good read on a candidate’s skills and
temperament. Knowing that, many employers try to put job seekers at ease. So
save your best anecdotes for later in the interview when you’ll actually need
them. This question is just about setting the tone.
“WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS POSITION?”
Hidden Meaning: ” Do you really understand what this job entails,
and do you really want to do it?”
“Sometimes people will say, ‘Well, I saw this listed in the job
description, and it is exactly what I’m doing now,’ and then proceed to talk
about how much they don’t enjoy that position and want to do something else,”
says Joy Solorzano, HR manager at the advertising platform Intermarkets. So she
asks this question in order to make sure a candidate will be as enthusiastic
about the job as they claim they’d be.
“I also want to ensure that the candidate is looking at the role
in its entirety, versus just honing in on one area of interest,” Solorzano
adds. “Say one position has a video production component, but the majority of
the role is focused on writing. If the candidate is drawn to the video
component, but I know that might only be a few hours a week, I don’t want them
to be sold on the idea of doing something in a role, only to find out that it
isn’t a primary responsibility.”
Browne sees it as “a solid question about motivation . . . If
someone says, ‘Hey look, I could work for a lot of different companies or a lot
of different jobs, but here’s why I think I could do a great job in this role
at this company,'” that’s a good sign they’ve thought things through.”
“There’s nothing worse than responding with a canned,
surface-level response,” adds Hughes. “The hiring manager wants to hear
specifics: What spoke to them about the role? Why do they want to be part of
what we are doing?”
“WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?”
Hidden Meaning: “What are your career aspirations and are they
realistic?”
This can be one of the more
annoying interview questions candidates face, but there
are actually many good ways to answer it once you know what a hiring manager or
recruiter might be looking to find out.
It “sounds cliché,” Browne says, “but the heart of the question is
good,” and it’s going to come up eventually once somebody’s brought inside a
company: What do you want to do with your life? Browne
suggests focusing less on the five-year window than on that core question of
motivation. “As a manager, if someone has clarity, it’s a heck of a lot more
helpful and useful for me helping them. Then I can engage in a way that’s very
specific”–for instance, by giving a direct report projects and opportunities
that square with their longer-term goals and passions.
Solorzano sees this differently. “First, I want to measure if they
have reasonable expectations,” she says. “If they are starting in an
entry-level role and want to be a vice president in five years, that may mean
they’re incredibly driven, or it may mean they have unrealistic expectations.
We’d need to explore that a little more.”
“Career pathing isn’t dead,” Hughes says. “This question helps
start the conversation around a candidate’s career aspirations that they can
later fuse into an individualized career plan.” Like Browne, Hughes likes the
way this question nudges job seekers to think about specifics. “If a candidate doesn’t
come prepared to speak on this topic in an interview, they aren’t doing any
favors for their professional development.” In fact, this type of conversation
gives candidates a great chance to ask about growth opportunities in the role.
“CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT A RECENT FAILURE?”
Hidden Meaning: “How honest and self-aware are you?”
“I’m looking to learn more about a candidate’s attitude and
mind-set here,” Solorzano explains. “What were the lessons learned? Did this
ever happen again? If you could go back and change something, what would you
do?”
She prefers hearing about a firsthand experience, of course, but
when a candidate struggles to think of one, Solorzano says, “I always give them
an outlet. If you can’t think of anything from work, how about school? Sports?
Anything? If they’ve prepared in advance, they should be able to come up with
something. If they aren’t pulling from personal experience, at least you might
hear some of their problem-solving skills.”
But for Browne, not having a compelling–and recent–narrative for
the common “failure” question is a red flag. One candidate his team recently
interviewed “literally had to go back many years” to find an experience to draw
on. That made the LinkedIn recruiter think, “What’s up with that?” Brown recalls.
“We followed up with the candidate and said, ‘To be very honest, when we asked
you that question, you had to go back a long way. Can you tell me more about
that?'”
In addition to understanding how a candidate handles failure,
Browne adds, this question also helps hiring managers assess “how open and
honest and self-aware they are. One guarantee” for everybody, he adds, “is
we’re going to screw things up.”
BY RICH BELLIS
https://www.fastcompany.com/40467864/the-secret-meanings-behind-four-of-the-most-common-interview-questions?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=09202017
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