HOW to Answer Interview Questions about you

Question 1: Why should I hire you?

 

Question translation: What are your strengths and how will they contribute to the success of your team and my company? How do your strengths fit into my company?

How to Answer: This is not an opportunity to wax lyrical about your achievements and use endless clichés to describe your prowess. (A word of advice: AVOID clichés and unnecessarily large words...both will make you look very silly.)

This is the time to tell me what your strengths are (if you haven’t already), why you think it is a strength in relation to this position and how they will benefit the potential team and department that the role sits in and the organisation as a whole. Look at the key desirable qualities or competencies of the role and show how your strengths complement them and how they are ideal to carry out your assignment. Show how you can fit into the company while standing out in terms of quality of work and service. And finally, what do you think makes you stand out as an excellent choice? List any achievements that relate in any way to the job in question. For example a job in a recruitment agency, if in a previous role you were able to see 80% of agency workers get hired or similar in a redundancy situation this is where you should highlight and emphasize it.

 

Question 2: Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?

Question translation: How long are you planning on sticking around? What is/ does this job really mean to you? What do you want to have achieved professionally in 5 years time? What do you hope to have achieved in this company via this role in 5 years time and how does that relate to your career objectives?

How to Answer: One of the most common questions ever.  No, not married with 3 children (even if you do) and please not the cliché ‘in a management position’ or ‘climbing up the corporate ladder’. What I want to know is if you are looking to diversify your knowledge or specialize in a particular area in your field. Do you intend to ‘stick around’? Are you one who is interested in expanding their knowledge base and building on it? Do you see this role as just a boot in the door and a step to something better? Never ever let on that a job is a step to something better, the second an interviewer sniffs that you can just say ‘Sayonara’ to that job.  No one wants to hire someone who will skip out the second something better comes on the scene even though it is sometimes inevitable. Why you ask? Well, think of recruitment costs, training, onboarding, and procuring equipment not to mention time spent. Now imagine that after all this, 2 months later that person skips out and you have to do it all over again, yep if I can smell that the job is just a foot in the door and you are not very enthusiastic (don’t be overly enthusiastic either) about it, you can bet I will not be offering you a job anytime soon. Also as much as possible try and give measurable answers.

 

Question 3: What about the role interests you? Why did you apply for the job?

Question translation: Why do you want to leave your previous role for this? What is the difference in your previous role and this that would make you leave it for this?

How to Answer: No, not the benefits. NEVER the pay/ salary and definitely not the opportunity for advancement! It will just make you look like a gold digger and like you are more interested in the job because of the pay and benefits and not in the actual role itself. As I’ve said previously, you do not want to ever give off the impression that you see the job you are interviewing for as a stepping stone to better roles in the company even if to you it is. You can be sure that if so much as a whiff of this intent comes through the job is NOT yours. To answer this sort of question, first talk about any similarities in this role and previous roles you have held, then talk about areas in this role that you feel will give you greater sense of achievement than your previous role and how you see this specific role as more challenging and potentially more satisfying than current/ previous roles. And then talk about how this sort of advancement to this role and the role itself including the company itself (say some fab things about the company) fit in with your ambition and career plans and goals.

 

Question 4: What are you looking for in your next role?

Question translation: Again, why are you interested in this role? How does this fit into your career plan?

How to Answer: Need I say anything? You are looking for this role. As per the previous question, relate it to the job in question. However while you would have answered question 3 like this:

‘I applied for this role due to that fact that I would have the opportunity to manage a full lifecycle implementation of Oracle software because while my previous role entailed this, we already had a system in place and so data was transferred and we did not have build everything in the ERP system’.

Your answer for this question will be more like this:

‘I am looking for a role that will give me full autonomy over a full lifecycle implementation of a ERP system as my previous role was a lifecycle implementation made easier because we already had a system and so most parameters were transferred.’

As in question 3, conclude by showing how this fits in with your career plans and goals.

 

Question 5: Walk me through your CV

Question translation: How does your previous experience fulfil my requirement for this role. How does it make you the best candidate for the role?

How to Answer: Always start with your earliest RELEVANT experience. You don’t always have to discuss about every job you’ve done if it is not related to the role in question. As you discuss each role emphasize duties, achievements and qualities which are required for the position in question. Using the job description, determine the most desirable and essential qualities and duties to be carried out and then look for areas in your previous experience which bring these to the fore. These are the areas you should discuss when this question is asked. This will help to show that you have both the experience and the expertise for the new role.