Baur - The Essential Job Interview Handbook: A Quick and Handy Resource for Every Job Seeker

Overseeing a job search and re-employment system that helps 13,000+ customers a year looking for employment, I highly recommend that jobseekers read, The Essential Job Interview Handbook. It not only provides you with multiple ways to answer key questions, but also helps you understand why the questions are being asked and what goes into hiring managers decisions. You will consult this book over and over!

John Beauregard, executive director, Eastern CT Workforce Investment Board

The Essential Job Interview Handbook offers specific strategies to ensure greater comfort and confidence in interviews. Baur offers numerous examples of how to effectively answer challenging interview questions and includes good, better and best candidate responses. This format allows candidates to see the logic behind questions they will be asked so they can more effectively reference their relevant skills and experiences. Baurs MAP and ZAP strategies empower candidates to think strategically about their job search, mapping their relevant skills and experiences to the position, reframing questions when necessary, and closing with a thoughtful summary of their fit for the position. Most importantly, Baur emphasizes the fact that interviewing is a skill that can be learned and she offers candidates the educational roadmap for mastering this skill.

Nancy Burkett, director of Career Services, Swarthmore College

Jean Baurs The Essential Job Interview Handbook is a practical primer for job seekers, recruiters and managers. It underscored for me how thoughtful preparation is the critical differentiator to having a successful interview. These insightful reflections and tips will assist applicants at any stage in their careers. As students and graduates ask me about the next steps in their careers, I will refer them to The Essential Job Interview Handbook as a solid resource to help them reflect on their experience and frame their answers.

Thomas P. Chester, senior HR manager, Office of Human Resources,
Princeton University

A QUICK AND HANDY RESOURCE FOR
EVERY JOB SEEKER

JEAN BAUR

Copyright 2013 by Jean Baur

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

THE ESSENTIAL JOB INTERVIEW HANDBOOK
Printed in the U.S.A.

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The Career Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Baur, Jean, 1946

The essential job interview handbook : a quick and handy resource for every job seeker / by Jean Baur.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-282-1 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60163-511-2 (ebook : alk. paper) 1. Employment interviewing--Handbooks, manuals, etc.. 2. Job hunting--Handbooks, manuals, etc.. I. Title.

HF5549.5.I6B375 2014
650.144--dc23

2013034207

For my husband, Robert.

Thank you to Orville Pierson for introducing me to Career Press, to Mary Glynn and Frank Harvey for reading a draft of the book, and to the talented team at Career Press. And to all the others who helped: Youre the best!

A huge challenge in the interview process is preparing for the unknown. Even with a fairly detailed job description or a briefing by a knowledgeable recruiter, job candidates often dont know the companys needs or what will happen during the interview. Huge shifts take place that wethe ones being interviewedcant predict. That is one of the reasons why interviewing successfully is so difficult; we have to pay close attention to what were told and what were not told, as well as to the many non-verbal signals we receive. And many people conducting the interview arent well prepared, havent been trained in interviewing, and often dont like the process.

The Essential Job Interview Handbook takes a practical approach to this critical challenge, and will help you prepare effectively for interviews; become familiar with different types of interview questions and answers that focus on a wide range of functions including science, IT, finance, and marketing; know what to do after an interview; and then put it all together. You will learn how to integrate the intangibles with solid practice. Whats unique about this approach is that its both proprietary and road-tested. These are strategies that Ive developed throughout my 19 years as a career coach and Ive seen firsthand that they work.

The body of the book consists of sample questions with answersmultiple answers with an evaluation of what makes the best one. By going through these common interview questions, you are not only given an immediate way to do better on interviews, but you will also gain an understanding of successful strategies. In other words, instead of a list of questions with possible answers, this book puts those samples into a context that will prepare you for any situation.

Other interview books dont:

use the MAP that is a critical part of both preparation and doing well in all-day interviews.

give you a systematic way to probe for needs.

explain what makes the best answer.

base the interview questions and answers on years of coaching job seekers of all functions and levels.

provide a critical technique for turning negative or difficult questions around.

help you find a way to subtly run the interview or support an interviewer who is unprepared, inexperienced, or distracted.

This book has five sections: Preparation, Types of Questions, Types of Interviews, Managing Expectations, and Putting It All Together. In each chapter there is an overview that proposes major concepts, followed by case studies, work sheets, sample questions and answers, and useful templates. Next, youll find a fun section called Ditch It!, which are examples of weak responses to interview questions that you want to avoid, accompanied by a brief explanation of why theyre ineffective. The last section is Tips, a list that distills the major points of the chapter and that adds additional information.

What makes this book different from many on the market is how it teaches readers to think strategically. Lets say Im asked a typical interview question such as: Jean, why have you pursued jobs in so many different fields?