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.”
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https://www.fastcompany.com/40467864/the-secret-meanings-behind-four-of-the-most-common-interview-questions
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