Prepare Both Questions and Answers BEFORE Your Interview

Your Questions Are Just as Important as Your Answers

Even experienced employees sometimes overlook the necessity to prepare thoughtful questions for job interviews. Many become so focused on anticipating questions and preparing erudite answers, they spend insufficient time creating meaningful questions for the interviewer.

This is a major mistake on two levels:

1. Having no questions or poorly constructed ones leads interviewers to believe that you didn’t prepare for the interview by researching the company.
2. Not asking meaningful questions deprives you of important information that might strongly influence your desire to accept if an offer is made.

First, do some research. Learn all you can about the company using the Internet, the library, or a top employment firm, like Kelly Services. Think about what you learn. Those issues not addressed by these sources should form the basis for some questions for your interviewer.

Do not prepare or ask any questions that are clearly answered on the company website, print materials, or other public research documents. Regardless of the job opportunity, do not prepare questions regarding compensation or benefits, as interviewers should always introduce these issues. When at the interview, do not ask any questions the interviewer has already answered, regardless of how wonderful and thoughtful they may be.

The quality of your questions is just as important as the depth of your answers at your interview. Company representatives evaluate your entire package at an interview. Let your stage presence, oral and body language, behavior, personality, and suitability for both the job and the company display your candidate strength.

Prepare Answers to Commonly Asked Questions

Depending on the authority level of the opportunity, the industry, the interview philosophy of the company, and the critical skills sought by the employer, interview questions can take many forms. However, contemporary interviewers often ask some common questions. Here are some popular interview questions that you should consider:

• What are your goals and objectives for the future?
• What is your plan to achieve your career goals?
• Why did you choose this career?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• What motivates you?
• Describe a real situation or problem that you handled for a positive solution.
• What interests you about our company and this position?
• How do you believe you would contribute to our company?
• How have your high school, college, or work experiences influenced your career?

These are but some of the most popular questions that interviewers often ask. There are many good answers to these questions, but the best are ones that were considered before the interview.

Preparation allows you to practice your answers to sound confident, relaxed, and clear. Interviewers understand the natural nervousness of job applicants. The more comfortable you appear, the better impression you should make. While your answers should never appear to be rehearsed, the more confidence and preparation you project, the better candidate you appear to be.

You know you’re good, but put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes. In less than an hour the interviewer must make some important decisions. Your answers to their questions and your thoughtful questions are the only data you provide to the interviewer, from which they must make critical decisions for both you and them.

Should you work with a top employment search firm, like Kelly Services, you’ll receive excellent help and advice to ask and answer questions properly. If you manage your own job and interview necessities, be diligent in doing your research and spend quality time structuring excellent questions and answers.

Practice asking the questions and delivering the answers. Should you anticipate multiple interviews at the same employer or at many different companies, the original questions and answers you develop can probably be used in slightly altered form in the future. You shouldn’t need to totally reinvent all questions and answers for multiple interviews. Practicing your spoken delivery will make you more comfortable and confident with each repetition.

Before you can practice and improve your delivery, however, you must prepare some good questions and answers. This is the most important component, as practicing marginal questions and answers will not help much. Questions and answers without substance will not help your cause. Interviewers tend to fall into one of two categories. Some are so experienced at conducting interviews, they have heard and seen it all, from the well prepared to the unprepared. The second category includes the hiring decision-maker, who knows his/her department and the position thoroughly.

In both cases, you must prepare meaningful questions and answers as either interviewer type will know if you have not. However, preparing thoughtful, important questions and answers often separates you from other, less prepared candidates. Generating an offer is your goal. The time spent on preparation and practice will often deliver the result you want.