How to Win the Job by Communicating with Confidence

Answering Interview Questions

school as a parking lot attendant. I liked meeting

people when they passed by, but I can’t really say it

was my favorite job.

ANSWERB: I have really liked all of my jobs equally. I guess you
could say all of them are my favorite jobs.

ANSWERC: I think my favorite job was bookkeeping because I
got to work mostly on my own. My least favorite job
was the one I had as a senior bookkeeper when my
manager was always checking over my work and
telling me what to do next.

Like many questions and with the hidden agenda, the ques-
tion above would probably be asked to uncover a “negative.”
Choice B is not really directly answering the question and sounds
a little wishy-washy. Answer C poses the most negative issues
because it indicates that this employee had trouble working with
his or her manager and probably doesn’t like working on a team.
Choice A is the preferred answer because it states two positive
skills that the person has (creativity and liking to learn new
things) and the negative (the job in the parking lot) is fairly
innocuous.
One of the most difficult and most frequently asked ques-
tions is the following:

QUESTION: Why did you leave your last job?

The real fear behind this question is that you may have been fired
or that you are just changing jobs on a whim, only for the money,
or that you are a “job hopper.”
Let’s look at three alternatives for fielding that one:

ANSWERA: I became aware that there were some excellent new
opportunities in the field of biotechnology. I really
wanted to expand my professional growth by finding
out more about them. This company, judging by
your Web site, seems like it would have some inter-
esting opportunities.

ANSWERB: I felt pretty bored at my last job, so I just wanted
something more stimulating.