The art of answering interview questions

Interviewing is one of the most important steps in the job-seeking process. An interview is generally the first face-to-face between a candidate and potential employer and is a situation where making a strong impression is important. Interview preparation can be important to help a candidate perform at peak.

Interview questions are challenging, because you have to maintain your context. The interview answer must be understandable to the interviewers and cover the whole of the interview questions in the required depth. Interview answers are constructed. Every piece is supposed to fit together, and answer the interview question in full. The idea is to give a response that sounds good, and has good quality information.

The primary skills in good interview techniques are fluency and clarity. Fluency is achieved by good construction of interview answers. Clarity is really a matter of practice, and doing some strict real-time quality control on your interview answers.

Don't you wish every job interview question would go exactly as you predicted? You know, the interviewer asks questions just the way you imagined? Unfortunately that rarely happens. You have to be ready for anything. That means you have to think through alternative strategies. And be prepared to answer questions you couldn't anticipate.

Be enthusiastic and confident when responding to questions. Don't rush your answers, but don't ramble on and on, either. Try to, um, avoid, like, using unnecessary words, right? And um, repeating yourself or, like, annoying phrases, you know?

A good technique is to write out your answers to the questions you anticipate, then edit them to make them more concise. Then practice your polished answers out loud, over and over. If you can have someone help you do a "mock interview," that would be the best way to do this. Most questions will relate either to your ability to do the job or to the type of employee you will be.

Each interview answer needs thought and some attention to the clearest possible way of giving your answer. This process becomes much easier with practice. You'll find that with time, you'll be able to put together a good clear interview answer within seconds of hearing the interview question. Clarity in interview answers eliminates doubt, like fluency. You make your point, or give your example, clearly. Clear interview answers have these characteristics:

Positive Characteristics:

Straightforward examples.

Step based logic for each part of the answer, literally A to B.

Explaining scenarios in 'Who What Where When' terminology, ' Who did what, where and when.'

Objectivity, setting out unambiguous statements of goals.

Negative Characteristics:

No extraneous information or subjects.

Nothing off topic.

Nothing out of sequential order (non sequiteurs are particularly confusing in interviews).

  

You will move forward to the next step only if the interviewer likes you! That's right! In the final analysis, once you're in the interview, it's less a matter of convincing the interviewer that you can do the job than of convincing them you're the kind of person the want. That means they have to like you!