The Employment Report

Just about every career advice book, website, news report, pamphlet and leaflet recommends having a friend or relative run a practice interview with you before attending the “for real” one. To be sure, that is excellent advice.

However, those situations hardly ever simulate a real interview with some of the out-of-left-field questions that usually pop up. It’s the difference between training for battle and actually being dropped into a war zone.

I’d suggest treating every interview you go on as a learning experience. Immediately after the interview has completed, go home and write down as much of it as you can remember. Write down not just the questions and your responses, but also what you remember the reaction of the interviewer was to each response. This information will be useful for your next interview, whether you get the job or not. Trust me, even if you get the job there will be another interview someday.

Then, before you go on your next interview look over your notes to analyze what you think you did well and what you didn’t. Most importantly, look at the unexpected questions that were tossed your way – the ones that you didn’t go over in the practice interview with your friend or relative.

If you have notes from several different interviews, try and locate a pattern to these off-beat questions. Really dig deep and try to surmise what response the interviewer was actually looking to get. Most questions in an interview have a specific purpose, whether it’s to gather simple information or to test how well you think on your feet. What do you think this question’s true intent was?

Teach yourself to quickly recognize what the expected response is for these questions, and then to answer appropriately.

Keep all of this in mind when heading off to your interview. It will focus your mind on the inner workings of the interviewer’s process so that when they hand you an off-beat question, you won’t have to punt. You will be able to give them the answer they want.