The process of securing a job usually includes a point where the potential employer seeks to know and evaluate the job seeker through a thorough conversation: interview questions and answers. Usually, these conversations do not follow the same step. And for job seekers, it is usually difficult to pinpoint exactly how to navigate these conversations, as the tone depends on the party hiring, while the answers from the job seeker determine their fate.
Sometimes, your this conversation would go beyond common interview questions and answers. Job seekers may be obligated to carry out tasks or show their exceptional quality through very tedious situations. Reading through this article, you would come across some of the interview questions that would throw you off balance and how to respond, including behavioral interview questions.
You are completely stumbled by a question
Assuming you encounter a situation where an interview question becomes too complex and gets you very perplexed. You might be tempted to escape by attempting to deceive the interviewer into believing that you have the abilities to deliver. Trust me, the interviewer would have appraised your abilities carefully before arriving at such interview questions besides knowing what you should say and could spot if you’re being insincere, which spells doom already for you.
Instead of trying to outsmart the interviewer with unrealistic answers and ending up getting ensnared, it is better to come clean and be sincere about the situation, earning yourself some trust and integrity in the process. Every good and serious interviewer will never fail to note your sincerity and will appreciate how honest you were in handling the situation, knowing that you will bring such a trait on the job. The best shot is to first acknowledge you have no idea and to cite a similar situation and how you handled it. Hiring managers most times are not solely interested in the interview questions and answers but your composure and integrity.
Getting conflicting information about the job from different interviewers
When facing lots of interviewers at once, you are likely to have it as a huge benefit because you can get better and different perspectives on the job. But what if you’re getting conflicting information about the job from different interviewers? It is very pertinent to seek clarifications, else you risk ending up in a job that turns out to be different from what you were signing up for.
When you need to explain your past firing
Assuming you were required to explain why you were fired from your previous or similar job which obviously will dread you in an interview, do not fret, take it on by heightening your composure:
- Be as calm as you can be, don’t sound defensive or bitter. Be in charge of your emotions as failure to do so will be a red flag for your interviewer. You should sound like you have learned from the previous experience and have moved on.
- Be concise by stating in a few sentences all that happened, and not giving a detailed account of what went down.
- You should also rehearse your answer ahead of time as firing can be an awkward thing to discuss during a job interview. Practicing out loud makes it more likely that you won’t sound horribly uncomfortable when it comes up.
In your concise response, capture why you and your employer were mismatched or otherwise what went wrong, followed by a statement about what you’ve learned or done differently now as a result. However, this is not one of the common interview questions.
If your interviewer requests for free work
It is smart for employers to find ways to see job candidates in action. An employer may have boxed you into a corner if you are asked to spend more than an hour or two producing real work for them. However, if you protest or reject, you risk losing the opportunity to clinch the job. Nobody would want to work for a company that is inconsiderate of candidates by taking advantage of them, but the honest reality is that not everyone has lots of options.
If you are going to express your reservations, you have to also play smart by being tactical in your response. You could respond this way:
“I honestly do not think it’s suitable for me to do this project credibly without knowing more. If it’d be convenient for you, we can talk about it as a consulting project. I cannot really spend more than an hour or about that on assessment exercise right now due to other commitments.”
If you are dealing with a feeling that you performed badly
At the end of an interview session with your potential employers, it usually registers in your mind how well or badly you might have performed. From the self-confidence that comes from being sure of the answers, you had supplied to the facial expressions of the interviewer showing approvals or disapprovals.If you feel you had done badly in an interview, you don’t have to remain as dejected as you were when you left the interview room. You could still get hired after all. While leaving the interview you might wish you could have the interview redone or maybe find a way to appeal to the interviewer to be considerate as you know you weren’t at your best.
In the process of hiring labor, some questions the interviewer throws at you do not really matter nearly as much as others, and sometimes people’s self-assessments are not in line. You could still try to salvage the situation by trying some few options.
If you think that in the entire process of the interview that you hadn’t really gotten it right on one or two questions you could while sending the interviewer a thank-you note strongly restate your deep interest in the job with additional notes addressing your performance.
For instance, if the issue is that the interviewer drilled you so much in an unfamiliar field, you could say something like this in your thank-you note:
“I want to be honest and open about the fact that I’m not deeply experienced in X, though I expect my background in Y would be useful in helping you achieve Z.”
However, you should know that if the company is really looking for serious experience in X, this may not be a job for you.
Good Luck!