Sitting down face–to-face with your potential employer can be one of life's
most nerve-racking experiences.
You, the candidate, may think all you can do is cross your fingers, talk
up your ability in the workplace and hope for the best.
Wrong.
The Liverpool Echo has put together a list of the trickiest – but most
common – questions you can be asked in an interview with the help of jobs site
Fish4Jobs.
Fancy a sneak peak at the toughest questions you could be asked in a job
interview? Here they are.
1. What do you
consider to be your biggest failure?
The best way around this question is to give it a positive spin and use
your answer to work to your advantage.
According to experts, the biggest mistake you can make with your answer
is to say that you haven’t had any failures.
Instead, find an example where you turned a failure into a positive.
Talk about what you learnt from this and how you used the experience to
improve.
Own your mistakes and make sure you show how you used this mistake to
succeed later on.
2. Why is there a gap
in your work history?
If you have a gap on your CV you need to be prepared to talk about why
this is.
This can seem daunting but it’s important you don’t shy away from it and
address it head on.
Chances are an employer will ask you about it and want to know what you
were doing.
Whatever the reason make sure you talk about it in a positive way and
how it helped you improve.
It doesn’t matter if it was a break to travel or have children, there
will be something you took away from the experience that you can use to your
advantage in a job interview.
Even if you were let go from a job you need to be honest because an
employer can easily check up on what you say.
3. What are your
salary expectations?
Before you go into interview you should have a good idea what the salary
is for the role.
If it wasn’t specified on the job advert then make sure you have
researched pay scales for that sector so you know what the expected salary is.
The last thing you want to do is ask for a salary that is unrealistic.
This could ruin your chances and make you seem greedy.
Do your research into the industry and what other companies pay their
employees for the same role to inform your answer before the interview.
4. What motivates
you?
There’s no right or wrong answer for this question.
Everyone’s answer will be different and it’s important to have an answer
that reflects your personality.
The interviewer is really looking to find out about you, what you are
like, and what drives you.
You need to be honest and say what your reasons are behind your
motivations.
Be careful saying that money - this can lead your employer to worry
about you leaving the company at the first sign of a bigger salary elsewhere.
5. Do you prefer
working by yourself or working in a team?
This is perhaps the toughest question of the lot because both are
important and what employers want to see.
A good way to approach this is to find a happy medium, and sell yourself
as both a team player and a solo worker.
Make sure you show you can do both and provide past examples of how you
have done this.
You can prefer one over the other but you need to make it clear that you
can excel in both areas.
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