Speaker 1: Okay, the title of this video says it all. We are talking about answering the top 10 most common interview questions. So, grab pen and paper, take some notes, let's get into it. Before number one, if we haven't met, my name is Cassandra. I'm a career strategist and speaker, and I help people go from hating work to happy work. So, let's get your interview answers tight. Starting with that most common question you will be asked, tell me about yourself. Okay, this is one of those where people can ramble, ramble, ramble. So, practice this one at home, take some notes for yourself, like go through it. But essentially, this is a brief overview of who you are. Keep this one to three minutes long, tops. My old video has different advice. My very old video has different advice, but it's revised now. One to three minutes, tops. Highlighting things you've done before, titles you've had, and one key thing from that job that ties to the current position, okay? So, really brief overview of you professionally. That's an important note to say. Not, oh, I love long walks on the beach, and my favorite coffee at Starbucks is a cold brew iced, whatever. Cold brew is iced always, that was redundant, sorry. None of the personal stuff, though. Though, let's take a sip of coffee. None of the personal, it's an about yourself. So, again, highlight one thing from each of the core positions that relate to this job, and then always end on why you're in the room today. People have a really hard time ending this question. They think like, hey, I do interview coaching, and I watch people stumble over this. They're like, yeah, and yeah, they don't know how to end it. So, that's how you end it, is ending with why you're in the room today. So, you're going to say all your things about what you've done before, what you're currently doing, and then how this is the next step. And I'm very excited to speak with you all today because I believe I'm a great fit for the blah, blah, blah role, or I believe this role is the next step in my career journey, and I'm very excited to talk about it. Like, great. End on why you're in the room. Okay, the second most common question is actually a catch-all of all the most common questions, which are behavioral questions. These are the ones that start with, tell me about a time when. Now, I have a bunch of other videos going deeper on this, but essentially, you want to answer this with what's known as the STAR method. There are variations on this. There's the CAR method, et cetera. But essentially, you want to answer by giving the situation, the task, the action, and the result. So, situation and task often go together. Sometimes I do like to think about this instead as the context. So, give me the context. What do I need to know before you tell me the action you took? So, who was there? What was the goal that was set? What company was this at? What role were you in? What were you tasked with doing? And then, you give the action. Here is what I did. Here is how we worked through blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you give your action, and then you want to end on the result. What happened as a result of that action you took? So, people can sometimes get lost on this one. They start only talking about themselves. A lot of time, the result is how others responded to your action, or the endgame of what happened with that project. You know, did you increase sales? Did you increase efficiency? What was the end result? Don't leave that off. The money is in that result. All right, question three. What's your greatest weakness? Okay, I kind of can't believe this question is still being asked, but from what I'm hearing, it is still being asked in certain positions. A lot of entry-level positions. Sometimes, too, just if you're new to a company, they'll ask this one. Here's what you don't want to do. You never want to use a strength as a weakness. So, you're never going to be like, oh, I am such a perfectionist. Like, we all see through that now. What you want to do with this one, and it takes some finessing, is give an actual weakness, but one that is not directly related to the core skills of this position. So, for example, if it's a job in sales, and you have to be okay with outreach and meeting new people, you're not going to say that your weakness is that you're shy. A little too close to being the antithesis of what this position needs. But what you can do is share something that's not directly related to the position. So, the other thing is you want it to be an actual weakness. I know I said that before, but I want to hit it again. An actual weakness. So, one of the weaknesses I give a lot is that I am highly opinionated. I have an opinion on everything, including which fast food restaurant to go to, even though it doesn't really matter to me. And so, in meetings, I can often be the first one to talk when asked for ideas, suggestions, etc., because my brain is just firing on all cylinders of wanting to give my answer. But I have learned that other people need more time to process, or that if I'm constantly going first, people can feel like they don't have room to have a voice. So, I've learned that while I have an opinion on everything, not every opinion needs to be heard, and I need to give others the space to speak first before I share my answer every time. So, the keys to that were it was an actual weakness, it probably isn't going to affect the actual work being done, and then third, hadn't talked about this part yet, you show that you're working on it. So, I gave an example of here's how I'm working on this weakness. So, that's what you want to do. Real weakness, not directly tied to the job, show how you're working on it. Okay, question number four. Why are you interested in our company, right? Like, why Google? Why Amazon, right? You want to show actual passion for the company. Look up their mission, their vision, their values, and link it to your own. Show that. Make sure you're using some sort of phrase from their mission, from their five-step strategic plan, something that says, hey, you put this in your plan, and that really resonates with me because, and give something that is authentic to you, but it's also going to show that you actually care about their company because you went and researched all of that. So, show that you've done your research, connect your mission, vision, values to theirs, and talk about how your passion also aligns to the role. Briefly, they're also probably going to say, why are you interested in this position? But for this one, you do want to add a little bit about how, why you want to do this role at this company. And so, talk about your own passion, your own enthusiasm based off their mission and how you align together. Okay, question five. Why are you considering leaving your current position, or why did you leave your last position? So, the really key thing with this is, nobody said this has to be a long answer. I think people get really freaked out by this one. I myself have been freaked out by this question, and you start over-explaining yourself. So, first tip with this one is, remember, no one said this has to be a long answer. Answer, be confident in your answer, stay silent. That's it, just stay silent. Let them move on to the next question. Now, as for the actual answer itself, you want to stay positive. Focus on how this position is a new challenge for you, or how you would exhausted all your resources of what you could do promotion-wise at that place, and now you're ready to take this next step in your career. This is the next challenge, you're seeking new opportunity, etc. Or maybe not challenge growth, right? But something in that realm. Avoid toxicity. You can totally be leaving a job for toxic reasons, I have, but we don't bring that up here. Remember, they don't really know you yet, so they don't know how much to trust what you're saying in that sense. So, you want to stay away from, oh, I loved what I did, but my co-worker was toxic, or my boss was a monster, or whatever. Those reasons get put to the side. So, for this one, focus positive, focus on why you're sitting in the room with them, and keep it brief. Oh, one other thing you can do with this one is showcase how this new role would fill your career goals. So, I'm leaving that position because it did these things for me, but now, I saw this position come up, and I'm so excited for it because, and you talk about all the cool things you like about this new role, and how you just really couldn't pass up that opportunity. So, technically, you answer them, but you also refocus them. Okay, this next one. This is a bigger one with entry-level people, but what are your long-term career goals, or where do you see yourself in the next five years? You want to keep this one broad. People get kind of freaked out by this and think, oh my gosh, I have to say something super specific. No. When people are going in for entry-level jobs, and they say something like, well, I'd hope in two years I'm a manager, it's like, okay, so you don't have any realism for how this works. So, you want to stay broad, and you don't want to say anything that doesn't align to what this company does. So, a really simple answer is something revolving around, I'm excited to learn what I can in this position, and then I would hope that I can develop, grow, and be promoted within this department, right? You know, if you have some certain goals in mind, like you're going for, you're starting as a publicity assistant, you hope to one day be a publicist, you can say that. You can say, my long-term goal is to be a publicist, so I would hope in my time here that I learn from the team, and learn more of the skills I need to work my way into that role over time, right? So, you can share some of it, but don't put strict timelines on that. Another common one that comes up is something around teamwork or collaboration. So, tell me a time you collaborated with stakeholders from other departments, or you worked as a team, something like that. On these, you do always want to use that star method, and then you want to make sure you're not just highlighting yourself, but you're highlighting the team and how you worked in it. What role did you serve on the team? So, situation task is going to be the overall of what the team was assigned to do. Let me know who the players are in this case, right? Was it people from different departments? Was it a team of six? Was it a team of 20? And then, how did you divide things out? What role did you serve? The action would then be, what role did you play, not just on the team, but on working with others? Show how you're collaborating, how you're communicating, how you're trying to foster an environment that feels like everyone gets to be heard and seen in some way, right? And then, don't forget, give that result. Okay, the next one is another sort of catch-all, and it's those tell-me-about-a-time questions that are about a challenge, a difficult situation, a difficult person. So, tell me about a time you had a challenging manager. Tell me about a time you worked with a challenging client or a difficult client, etc. On these, we always want to, again, give that situation and task. What was the situation at hand? What's the context I need to know of why this situation was challenging or why the person was challenging? So, sometimes that gets missed. People give the actual situation, the task. They don't give the why behind it, why it was a challenge. They think it's implied, like, oh, we had this project and the deadline was next Tuesday, and then they go straight into their action, but, like, I don't know why that's hard. So, if you say, oh, we had this task we had to work on, and the deadline was next Tuesday, we only had five days, and this is a challenge because normally a task like this is done over three weeks' time, and we had five days to get this accomplished. Okay, now I know why it's a challenge. So, that's actually what people miss a lot is they don't explain why it's challenging. They think it's implied, but remember, I haven't worked in your department. I haven't done that role before. Tell me why it's a challenge. So, you're going to give that, and then you're going to give the actions you took. You're going to give the actions you took to remedy the situation or to diffuse the challenge, diffuse the difficult client, etc. What is the action you took? But on this one, the result is so important because people love to end this with, like, their action, with, like, and then I went and talked to them, and we finished the project. It's like, well, okay, technically that's a result, but do they hate you now? Are you now friends? How did they respond to what you said? Or how did the rest of the team deal with the challenge of the project, and what was the result of you getting it in on time? Don't forget to give the result and the way the result was perceived by people other than you. Okay, the next common question, at least it's becoming more common, is having to give some sort of situation where you are adaptable or you are open to change. So tell me about a time you had to change direction quickly on a project, or tell me about a time you had to adapt to a situation. Adaptability is a huge success skill or soft skill, depending on the company you're at, and so you want to think through, what are some situations where I had to adapt, where I had to change course quickly, and how did I do it? So think through those ideas. And key things are you want to highlight your flexibility, how quickly did you turn, the ability to stay organized and productive while making this change, and your willingness to learn in this transition. What did you learn from having to adapt? What did you have to just get on board with even though you weren't sure, and what did you learn through that process? Make sure you're showing those components in your answer. And then number 10, how are you prepared to answer when the interviewer says, those are all of my questions, what questions do you have for me? Key number one is you have to have questions. You never want to say, you know, I'm pretty good. I don't think I have any questions for you. You always have questions. Now, I go over this in detail in many other videos, one that I'll link here in the description box below, but key things are I would always have three to four questions ready. Make them genuine questions you have about the position, and I would make sure they're in a couple of different categories. One, success focused, like if you got the role, how would you be successful in it? One, learning more about the company culture, the day-to-day structure, what a day looks like, what a week looks like, etc., how the department works together, something around that, and then a question around maybe their working style, their management style, anything in that area is good. And then I do love that question about hesitancy. If you want to know what that is, go check out the other video. We're not going to do it here. Now, if you need more help, I have, first off, like hundreds of videos on interviewing on this channel. You can catch a lot of those in the playlist here. If you want to catch that questions to ask at the end of an interview, I got that here. And then I also have a free interview prep checklist. It's everything you need to kind of get arranged and prepped for your next interview. You can grab it in the description box below, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.