101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions 101 GREAT ANSWERS TO THE TOUGHEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 25th Anniversary Edition BY RON FRY Copyright © 2016 by Ron Fry 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 infor- mation storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press. 101 GREATEST ANSWERS TO THE TOUGHEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TYPESET BY EILEEN MUNSON COVER DESigN BY HOWARD GROSSMAN/ 12E DESigN COVER PHOTO BY RAWPIXEL.COM Printed in the U.S.A. To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press. The Career Press, Inc. 12 Parish Drive Wayne, NJ 07470 www.careerpress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP Data Available Upon Request. | Contents | Introduction ................................................................................. 7 You Are in Charge Chapter One .............................................................................. 19 The Interview Process Chapter Two .............................................................................. 45 Who Are You? Chapter Three ........................................................................... 55 So, Tell Me About Yourself Chapter Four ............................................................................. 75 Questions About Your Education Chapter Five .............................................................................. 87 Questions About Your Experience Chapter Six .............................................................................. 113 Questions About Core Competencies Chapter Seven.......................................................................... 129 Questions About Your Current (or Last) Job Chapter Eight .......................................................................... 147 So Why Us? Chapter Nine ........................................................................... 167 Questions About Your Personal Life Chapter Ten ............................................................................. 189 Questions to Wrap Things Up Epilogue ................................................................................... 201 I’ve Got a Secret Index .........................................................................................203 NTRODUCTION You Are in Charge I started writing the first edition of this book in 1989, and the parallels with that year are a little eerie. The unemployment rate then and now is 5.3% and, then and now, has fallen steadily for two years. The 1989 economy had recovered from a 1982 recession and falling oil prices, and weathered a 1987 market crash. Our “ho-hum economy,” as the New York Times recently characterized it, is still recovering from a 2008 market crash and the Great Recession. The price of oil has fallen precipitously. Unemployment figures and pundits paint a contrasting picture— while the job market for current or recent college grads is consid- ered the best in a decade or more, there are 6.5 million people “working part time for economic reasons.” In other words, 6.5 million people who would prefer to work full time but can’t find a full-time job. Whether we are in a booming economy or a recession, most of the things you need to know and do during the interview pro- cess do not really change. In the 27 years since I wrote the first edition, an ever-changing job market has morphed from a seller’s (employee-friendly) market to a buyer’s (employer-friendly) mar- ket and back again. But in good times and bad, the power this book has given interviewees—whatever their ages, skills, or qual- ifications—has continued to grow. 7 | 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions | I certainly couldn’t boast of my own interviewing skills before I wrote this book. On the contrary, I had often not gotten jobs for which I was eminently qualified. So I spent quite a lot of time learning all the mistakes you could possibly make, having made each one of them—twice. Now, as a veteran of the other side of the desk as well (I’ve hired hundreds and interviewed thousands), I can tell you that interviewing is more serious business than ever before. Employers are looking for “self-managing” employees—peo- ple who are versatile, confident, ready and able to work with a team, and not afraid to roll up their sleeves, work long hours, and get the job done. “That’s me,” you chortle. Congratulations. But you won’t get the chance to prove yourself on the job without making it through the interview process. You can’t cheat on these tests There has been one significant development since the last edition of this book. According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of companies—including 457 of the Fortune 500—are using some form of “personality” testing that aims to correlate specific per- sonality traits with success in a particular job. One test vendor, Infor, claims to assess more than a million candidates a month. While tests such as Myers-Briggs and the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) were popular during the 1960s and ’70s, we are clearly in a new age that Time magazine recently noted “is being driven by a collision of two hot trends: Big Data and analytics…The result is a mostly unchallenged belief that lots of data combined with lots of analytics can optimize pretty much anything…even people. Hence, people analytics.” You may now have to take the DISC Assessment, which will grade you in four areas—Dominance, Defiance, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. Or the Hogan Personality Inventory, which assesses five. The 16PF measures 16 “normal-range” personality traits and five “second-order” traits. The California Psychological Inventory uses 18 scales in four classes to determine what the test | 8 | You Are in Charge taker will do in specific on-the-job situations. And the Caliper Profile will assess 25 personality traits related to job perfor- mance. The winner of this personality numbers game so far is Gallup’s Clifton Strengthfinder, which measures 34 traits (but is most interested in your top five). I know from experience that you cannot “beat” these tests. If you try to choose the answers you believe are “obviously” the ones showing your leadership, motivational, or team-building skills, you will not succeed. Since you can’t really prepare for these tests, relax and try to answer the questions honestly. Most such tests are merely trying to identify the jobs for which your “personality type” is best suited. And at most companies, they are merely one component of the interview process. I will leave it to others to argue whether it is possible (or desir- able) to accurately test for job-specific “success traits.” Whatever you believe about this new trend, it is clearly another obstacle many of you will need to hurdle. Interviewing was never easy, and right now it is as hard as ever. Companies are taking far longer to make hiring decisions, and only after subjecting prospective employees to these tests and scheduling more and longer interviews. But of all the tools in your professional arsenal, your ability to shine in that brief moment in time—your initial interview— can make or break your chances for a second go-around, and, ultimately, dictate whether you’re even given a shot at the job. Practice still makes perfect Like playing the piano, interviewing takes practice, and practice makes perfect. The hours of personal interviewing experience— the tragedies and the triumphs—as well as my years as an inter- viewer are the basis for this book. I hope to spare you many of the indignities I suffered along the way, by helping you prepare for the interview of your worst nightmares—at a comfortable remove from the interviewer’s glare. 9 | 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions | Will you have to answer every question I’ve included? Certainly not—at least, not in a single interview. But chances are, the questions tomorrow’s interviewer doesn’t ask will be on the tip of the next interviewer’s tongue. Why? It’s a mystery. I didn’t realize 25 years ago that I would start a competitive publishing battle to see how many interview questions could be featured in a single book. There were always more than 101 ques- tions in my book once one considered all the variations that I listed. But the success of that first edition led to an unfortunate numbers game. Soon there was a book touting 201 questions and answers, then 301, then 500, and, in a final burst of one- upmanship, 501. These numbers really don’t matter, especially if a single word change in one question magically transforms it into another. So please don’t count the questions in this edition or worry that you need to look at these other books to get a more “complete” list. Believe me, the ones in this book will suffice! Become an interview artist Most interviewers are not trying to torture you for sport. Their motive is to quickly learn enough about you to make an informed decision—should you stay or should you go? By the same token, if you know what they’re looking for, you can craft your answers accordingly (and reduce your own fear and anxiety at the same time). I hope you’ll take it a step further and use these questions as the basis for some thoughtful self-exploration. You’ll need to be prepared to think for yourself—on your feet, not by the seat of your pants. While it is certainly competitive, the interview process is not a competition. Rather than thinking of yourself as an athlete try- ing to “out-answer” the other candidates, consider an interview your chance to be an artist—to paint a portrait of the person you are, the candidate any company should like, respect…and want to hire. | 10 | You Are in Charge Chapters 1 and 2 offer a detailed discussion of the work you need to do and the things you need to think about long before you strut into your first interview. Interviewing may not be 99 percent preparation, but it’s certainly 50 percent.