Vicky Oliver - 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions

Copyright 2005 by Vicky Oliver
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oliver, Vicky.

301 smart answers to tough interview questions / Vicky Oliver.

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Employment interviewing. I. Title: Smart answers to tough interview

questions. II. Title: Three hundred one smart answers to tough interview

questions. III. Title: Three hundred and one smart answers to tough

interview questions. IV. Title.

HF5549.5.I6O38 2005
650.14'4--dc22

2005008423

Printed and bound in the United States of America
BG 10 9 8 7 6

This book is dedicated to my grandmother Margaret.
May she rest a little more peacefully,
knowing that I finally wrote something
in addition to advertising copy.

Writing is a solitary activity. But behind every successful writer is a team of people without whom the book would have never been made. My heartfelt thanks to:

Charlie Schulman, for believing in this project from the very beginning and for introducing me to the second Charlie, Charles Salzberg.

Charles, thank you for always meeting me for lunch at a moments notice to discuss random writer emergencies, and for introducing me to the indomitable June Clark.

June, thank you for your energy, drive, dogged persistence, and especially for introducing me to Bethany Brown.

Bethany, thank you for touching this book with your fantastic editing insights and for introducing me to the wonderful world of publishing.

In todays buyers market jobs are scarce, and hundreds of candidates compete for all too few positions. Companies have been forced to become incredibly selective as they sort through resume after resume from scores of qualified candidates. Due to other forces in the marketplace, glowing references do not carry nearly as much weight as they used to. As a result, the interview has become more like a final exam in college or even graduate school, complete with trick questions, curveballs, and ludicrously tough questions designed to shake out the applicant plum tree by deliberately putting candidates on the spot.

While the average interview still lasts for approximately forty-five minutes, it could well be the most harrowing forty-five minutes of your life. Interviewers no longer tend to ask How well do you respond to pressure?; they seek to determine it for themselves instantly, in your very first meeting, by mercilessly tossing you into a simulated pressure cooker situation.

How do you prepare for todays new, rigorous, psychologically draining interview? You need to treat it like the final exam (or trial) that it really is, and study for it.

The purpose of this book is to give you a quick reference guide to the 301 questions you are most likely to hear, and a way to answer them with intelligence, passion, and a certain flair that will help you best your competitors. Tips, brief analyses of why these techniques work, and helpful suggestions on how to rise above the pack will be peppered throughout.

Make no mistake: in order to prevail, you are going to need to trounce your competition. With all of the layoffs that have taken place during the past few years, its entirely likely that the company where you really want to work will be interviewing people from several different levels to fill the position you seek. You could be competing against someone with three times your experience, or conversely, against someone who can do the job at half your salary level.

How do you get over the hump? How do you convince this organization that you are the ideal candidate for the job, and to hell with the competition? Here are the 10 critical steps that you need to take to ace your first interview, so that you can move on to your second, third, and fourth interviews (at which point, hopefully, theyll offer you the job already).