Answering Interview Questionsership in my last company, not only did employee
satisfaction increase from 1.7 to 4.9 on a scale of 1 to
5 in only 1 year, but also absenteeism decreased by
over 51 percent. That’s exactly what I’d like to do for
your company.If someone asks you why he or she should hire you, you maybe
tempted to say, “Because I am the best person for the job.” Don’t.
Though you may be right, the interviewer can’t judge that from
an unsubstantiated opinion. Instead, you can win over the inter-
viewer by pulling out one of your best Q statements and adding
the tagline, “That’s exactly what I’d like to do... .”
The person being asked the following question is applying
for a sales engineer position in a pharmaceutical company:
QUESTION: What can you contribute to this company?
ANSWER:Well, I can contribute an excellent working knowl-
edge of pharmaceutical products, superior presenta-
tion skills, and excellent postsales follow-up disci-
pline. An example of my postsales follow-up proce-
dure at my last company was that I always called my
customers 3 days after the sale and made it a point to
call every 2 months after that point to make sure
they were satisfied. I was very happy that we earned
over $2 million in repeat business from one major
customer in the third quarter, due to my persistent
follow-up efforts. I’d like to make the same kind of
profits for this company.
Questions behind Questions
The whole secret to answering a question behind a question is
to understand the real intent of the question. To do that, follow
these steps:
- Become aware that the question is not what it appears at
face value. - Determine what the interviewer is reallyasking you.