And What You Should Not Say
By Fernando M. Tarnogol
Every manager has employed them at some point in their lives. Either because they are beginners and don’t know better, because they’ve used this questions for so long that it’s become second nature to them or for simple laziness. Expect to hear some of them in 95% of your job interviews.
A job interview is like a first date. The impression you make during the first 10 minutes will determine the rest of the night. The same thing happens when you get interviewed. This is the analogy made by Professor Allen Huffcutt, who has studied job interviews for more than 20 years, when he was interviewed by Ori Brafman for his book “Sway: the irresistible pull of irrational behavior”.
First impressions are what matters. If you fit a specific physical profile (more on this soon), if you can establish a good rapport, if the interviewer hears what we wants or expects to hear; then the interview is considered a success and you are hired.
Malcolm Gladwell gives a perfect example of how people are hired for reasons that have nothing to do with logic or reason in his bestseller book “Blink: the power of thinking without thinking”: Fortune 500 CEOs are mostly tall people (check out question #4). Invisible, sometimes irrational behavior, often leads recruiters to making regrettable decisions.
These are the 10 standard job interview questions compiled by Professor Huffcutt. They might have worked a couple of years ago. Nowadays they are just useless cliches.
- Why should I hire you?
- What do you see yourself doing 5 years from now?
- What do you consider to be your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
- How would you describe yourself?
- What college subject did you like the best and least?
- What do you know about our company?
- Why did you decide to seek a job with our company?
- Why did you leave your last job?
- What do you want to earn five years from now?
- What do you really want to do in life?
The questions center on specific themes.
First Group: 1, 3 , 4
The first group of questions focuses on the your self perception, in the most naive possible way. Would you answer “I usually get too drunk at night and end up being late for work” when asked about your weaknesses? No one mentally sane enough would. People are most likely to say something that doesn’t portrait them in an unfavorable light, such as “I worry too much about work”, or “I make mistakes because I work too fast”. For boxed questions, boxed answers.
Let’s continue: “How would you describe yourself?” Let me guess, team player, proactive, goal oriented… we’ve all heard or said that before, right? What else do managers expect to hear after shooting that question? Answering “I’m a professional slacker” hasn’t gotten anyone any jobs.
Take number 7: Why did you decide to seek a job with our company? “Because I desperately need a job and anything that pays the bill will do”. I doubt someone would ever get to that degree of honesty.
The same principle applies for question 1. These questions that aim to retrieve information about you, for the recruiter, have no predictive value whatsoever. It’s the same as asking a salesman what they think of their product. When you go to a job interview, you go to sell yourself.
Second group: 2, 9, 10
These questions are the ones commonly considered to have the most predictive value. For instance, let me predict the answer for question 9, how the candidate sees himself in 5 years: “in 5 years I’d like to move up the chain”, “I want to become a valuable member of this organization”, “I want to help people”, you get the picture. I don’t blame you for saying this, what else are you supposed to say if that’s what the interviewer is expecting to hear (or at least what you think he wants to hear). Again, more pre-baked questions with absolutely no predictive value, even when these questions are aimed to predict future performance and aspirations.
The odd one out
Most managers make their decision, and tag candidates, during the first 10 minutes of the interview. The rest of it is just to confirm their first judgment, and unless the candidate drops a bomb that make him open his eyes, both parties would have lost 40 minutes of their lives by the time the interview ends.
The question that still stands is number 6, “what do you know about our company?”, since it probes your interest in the job and how much you have researched and can open the door to productive conversation.
What to do when you are asked these questions
Since most recruiters and hiring managers always use the same questions, take into account that they are also accustomed to hearing the same answers. People usually tend to be as politically correct as possible while doing a job interview. It’s called being conservative. After all, the last thing you want is to make a bad impression on your future employer. Still, replying with canned answers won’t make you stand out of the crowd.
Don’t be afraid to break the mold (within appropriate levels) and be original and authentic in your answers. A good option, if possible, is when you take a subtle and flexible control of the interview. Take the reins but leave some room for the interviewer to talk back to you. The idea is to keep your interview from falling into this group of questions.
While making your pitch, make sure you include plenty of experiences from your current or past jobs. This will give the recruiter factual information about the way you work and think and you’ll spare him the need to ask stereotyped questions. At the same time, narrating something you’ve experienced, makes you look assertive since what you are doing is just pulling information from your long term memory, which requires little effort. You know what you are talking about because it’s your story.
Finally, keep the interviewer’s interest high. It’s important to continually assess the flow of the interview in order to detect when the interview is turning monotone and change its pace. The difference between failure and success lies in retaining your interviewer’s attention. You can achieve this by making your interview different than the other 95%.
About Fernando M. Tarnogol
Fernando Tarnogol is an Argentinean psychologist who lives in Pennsylvania, USA. His experience includes working for Microsoft, HSBC Bank Argentina in Human Resources and several mental health facilities performing clinical work . In 2008 he was recruited in Argentina by the Devereux Foundation, the biggest mental health care provider in the USA as a residential counselor and then subsequently changed positions into coordinating and managing some of the foundation’s programs. Fernando has a blog offering a psychologists take on social trends, management, psychology, and other stuff.
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Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!