Why do interviewers always start an interview with, tell me about yourself?
I never know what to say.
It turns out they just want you to be comfortable.
Asking questions to learn more about you is a common starting point to ease you both into the interview.
I'm Jen, a career coach and your go-to gal for all things career advice.
And I'm Gina, and hopefully we're going to help some people get their next job.
Welcome to Job Search Stories.
Let's get into this.
Not everybody realizes this, but an interview doesn't just start when you're meeting the interviewer.
It's going to start days or weeks earlier when you're actually prepping for the interview.
So what's the most extra thing you've done to prepare for an interview?
I know for me personally, I like to hype myself up some hype up music.
Maybe go for a little jog around my apartment so I can get really prepared.
What have you done?
I mean, I think that's a really great tip.
I don't think that's extra at all.
I think that's a great strategy to prepare.
You've never watched me do it.
It is extra.
You can hype yourself up.
One tactic that I like to recommend, which I think people might find a little bit extra, is called scare the bear.
Are you familiar?
No, but I feel like it's going to be something wild.
I think it's really cute.
And this is really like when you're about to go into an interview.
You can get in front of a mirror. make yourself as big as you can be, right?
You want to be a large, intimidating creature.
And you just yell.
The goal is you are this now powerful being and like psychologically, you're convincing yourself you're a fully confident person.
And that's a great boost right before you get into an interview.
Give us some other tips.
Okay well, some of the more practical For preparing for an interview, of course starts with preparation in the sense of studying the job description.
Get a good understanding of what the role really is.
You also want to study and find out more about the company itself.
What are their values?
What are things you can speak to?
Another thing that you can really look at is maybe prepping picking out what outfit you're going to wear.
You know, what are you going to feel confident in and comfortable in?
And then doing a mock interview.
It's a great way to practice some common interview questions and really get a feel for what are those stories I want to share that are going to demonstrate my experience.
On that last point, someone offered the same advice in our comment section and they said a mock interview with a friend can really help you nail the tell me about yourself questions.
We also get excellent questions.
So I want to read you one question.
Do you have tips for neurodivergent folks and how to approach that interview?
I can mask very well and have very good people skills.
But, for example example, sensory sensitivities and my need for clear communication put some restraints on possible jobs.
I'm extremely passionate and willing to give my best, but small talk, noisy environments or too many large group meetings just drain my battery beyond repair.
What are your tips for this person?
A lot of the tips for someone who is neurodivergent really apply to just about the general job seeker.
So, when we're thinking about preparation, that's how you're going to be able to alleviate a lot of stress if it's the day of setting alarms for yourself.
Setting one an hour before and then 30 minutes before, that kind of triggers you.
And so you kind of remember, all right, I've got to focus on this.
Really get good at telling a concise story.
So set some timers for yourself when you're practicing.
Set it for 90 seconds.
Use a framework like the STAR method, which is Situation, Task, Action, Result.
This is how you're going to be able to tell that story very quickly.
So it's all about doing preparation and just knowing what you can expect from an interview.
And of course, if you feel comfortable, you can always ask for accommodations.
Let the interviewer know what you need to be successful and give them the opportunity to accommodate you.
These are all really great tips on how to interview prep.
Now, part of interview prep is also preparing yourself for specific questions.
So what are some common interview questions that people should be prepared for?
So one of the most common questions that you're going to be asked, and especially going to be asked right out the gate tell me about yourself.
Other great questions would be, why do you want to work here?
Why did you leave your last job?
What are your salary expectations?
And what are some of your strengths or some of your weaknesses?
So I'm really happy you brought up the weaknesses question because this is a tricky one for me.
And I know a lot of people say it's tricky for them as well.
So I want to play a game where you can actually make your weaknesses, make you sound good and like a good person for the job.
The first one I have is I'm too focused on details.
If you're too focused on details, what you can say is one of the weaknesses that I've been working on is that sometimes I can be too focused on details when I'm working on a project.
So one strategy that I've been using that I found really helpful is called time boxing.
This is where I allocate a certain amount of time to work on a particular project.
And if I get to the point where the time is done, then I really let myself know okay, this is time to move on.
This really allows to stay on task and know that I have a fixed amount of time in which I can really pay attention to all of those little details.
That's just a work productivity tip in general.
I have another one.
It says, I have trouble asking for help.
What would you say in an interview to make yourself sound better?
I would say, again, one of the weaknesses that I've to appear competent at my job.
And so I will always try to solve a problem on my own first.
But if I get to the point where I know okay, I've exhausted all of my efforts, then I can feel comfortable reaching out and asking for help.
But when I do so I make sure that I take this person through the steps that I've taken so that they really understand that I really have put some effort in.
And then if there's an issue in my process, they can help me identify it.
Honestly, great talk track.
I think people should just literally say that.
I have another one.
This is the last one.
I have a hard time letting go of projects.
I have a hard time letting go of projects.
Same.
It needs to be perfect.
So I can't let go.
If you're like me and you have a hard time letting go of projects, you can say.
One of the things that I've been working on professionally is knowing when it's time to hand off a project.
I really like to have onus and put all of my best effort into a project.
But sometimes that can lead me to not necessarily knowing when to have it off.
So what I do is, when I feel like I should be at the end of the project, I ask myself What is the benefit of me working on this any longer?
Is there more value that I can add?
And if the answer is very little, then I know okay, I've reached my stopping point and it's time for me to move on.
And when we talk about weaknesses in an interview, really when we structure these answers, we want to identify a relevant weakness.
We never want it to be a weakness that is debilitating to the point where we wouldn't be able to complete the job at hand.
Right.
But if you'll notice, with all of these structured responses, it's really focusing on what are we doing to improve right?
What strategies are we trying?
Because that means that, of course, we're human.
We all have weaknesses, but we recognize these things in ourselves.
And so these are things that we're trying to hopefully get a little bit better every single day.
Just about how you frame it.
So far, we've discussed questions that your interviewer is asking you, but we need to talk about the questions that you need to be asking the interviewer in order to basically figure out if this job is right for you.
I want to know how you prepare for your own questions and what are the go-to questions that you would ask an interviewer.
Sorry. that you would ask an interviewer.
I knew what you were asking.
I mean, but maybe they didn't.
Of course, absolutely.
You should be preparing to answer questions yourself.
But interviewing is a two-way street, right?
You're going to be spending a lot of time there and with these people.
So, when thinking about the questions that you should ask, definitely have at least three to five questions prepared.
And I always advise to think about what are the questions you would need answered to know if this role or if this company is going to be the right fit for you to take you where you want to go.
So some questions that you could ask would be, what does a typical work week look like?
What are the opportunities for career growth here?
How does the team handle feedback?
Any question that's going to be important to you is going to be something that you would want to kind of jot down on a note and just be prepared to reference and ask at the end.
Right.
I think those are a lot of really good questions to make sure that a company is the right fit for you.
Wait, but do you have a question that you like to ask?
Do you accept jugglers in this role?
The answer is no.
Do you have a backup question?
Okay, my backup question would probably be like, what's the company culture like?
Like, you know, questions like that.
So I know that it's like a good place to work.
How would you know if a company has good culture?
If they say things like, oh, our benefits are X, Y, and Z, or people love doing this.
And it's like a group activity after work.
That tells me that it's not so strict of a workplace.
And it's more about like fostering this nice little community.
I think those are really great, right?
It's taking like a very holistic approach, right?
It's not just about the task at hand in terms of the job and what you're going to be doing day to day, but also about like the company and what is your place in it, and how do they treat and value the staff.
What are some red flag answers to some of these questions that you would ask during an interview?
Any red flag is going to be something that's contradictory to what they have in the job description, right?
So, for example, if you're looking at a role and it seems like a pretty fixed schedule and then you ask what does a typical week look like?
And they say you should expect to work 50 hours a week or on weekends.
We expect everybody to be on call.
If that's not what you're looking for in a role and that's a different picture than what they painted in the job description, that would absolutely be a red flag for you.
I always side-eye job descriptions that talk about hiring rock stars and use phrases like We work hard and play hard.
I'm like, ugh.
What does that even mean?
That means they overwork you and then they have a happy hour.
And then they bring you cookies and put them in the break room.
It's like pizza parties.
They'll have like pizza parties like in school.
No, I agree.
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