Interview Tips

Interview Tips
Plan Ahead - Do a little homework! Research the company and the position if possible, as well, the people you will meet with at the interview. Review your work experiences. Be ready to support past career accomplishments with specific information targeted toward the companies needs. Have your facts ready!

Role Play - Once you have finished studying, begin role playing (rehearsing). Use the general questions provided below in the Interview Preparation Area. Write down answers if it helps to make your presentation more concise. Try to keep your answers to the information your new employer will want to know.

Eye Contact - Maintain eye contact with your interviewer. Show you want the job with your interest.

Be Positive - In particular, avoid negative comments about past employers.

Adapt - Listen and adapt. Be sensitive to the style of the interviewer. Pay attention to those details of dress, office furniture, and general decor which will afford helpful clues to assist you in tailoring your presentation.

Relate - Try to relate your answers to the interviewer and his or her company. Focus on achievements relevant to the position.

Encourage - Encourage the interviewer to share information about his or her company. Demonstrate your interest.

Interview Questions
Below are questions you may be asked in the interview:
1. Tell me about yourself? (try to hold your response to 2 minutes)
2. What do you know about our company?
3. Why should we hire you?
4. What can you do for us that someone else can’t?
5. What do you look for in a job?
6. What skills and qualifications are essential for success in the position of ______?
7. How long would it take for you to make a meaningful contribution?
8. How does this assignment fit into your overall career plan?
9. Describe your management style.
10. What do you believe is the most difficult part of being a supervisor of people?
11. Why are you looking for a new career?
12. How would your colleagues describe you?
13. How would your boss describe you?
14. How would you describe yourself?
15. What do you think of your present or past boss?
16. What were the five most significant accomplishments in your last assignment?
17. What were the five most significant accomplishments in your career so far?
18. Can you work well under deadlines or pressure?
19. How much do you expect if we offer you this position?
20. Why do you want to work for us?
21. What other positions are you considering?
22. Have you kept up in your field with additional training?
23. What are your career goals?
24. What are your strong points?
25. What are your weak points?
26. How did you do in school?
27. What position do you expect to have in 2 to 5 years?
28. If you took the job what would you accomplish in the first year?
29. What was wrong with your current or last position?
30. What kind of hours are you used to working or would like to work?
31. Do you have your reference list with you? (Remember don’t give it out unless it is asked for).
32. Can you explain your salary history?
33. What questions didn’t I ask that you expected?
34. Do you have any question for me?

Questions with Excellent Sample Responses
Below are some of the most typical interview questions that you may face in your job interviews. Questions are in no particular order, so use them to guide you in some of your responses.

How would you describe yourself?
Sample excellent response:
My background to date has been centered around preparing myself to become the very best financial consultant I can become. Let me tell you specifically how I’ve prepared myself. I am an undergraduate student in finance and accounting at __________ University. My past experience has been in retail and higher education. Both aspects have prepared me well for this career.

What influenced you to choose this career?
Sample excellent response:
My past experiences have shown me that I enjoy facing and overcoming the challenge of making a sale. Without a doubt, once I have practiced my presentation and prepared myself for objections, I feel very confident approaching people I don’t know and convincing them that they need my product. Lastly, I like sales because my potential for success is limited only by how much of myself I dedicate toward my goal. If any profession is founded on self-determinism, it surely must be sales.

What will it take to attain your goals, and what steps have you taken toward attaining them?
Sample excellent response:
I’ve already done some research on other workers at Merrill Lynch to see how they achieved similar goals. I know that Merrill Lynch encourages the pursuit and will reimburse for tuition of a graduate degree. I plan on pursuing a MBA to give me an even more extensive knowledge of business and financial analysis.

How do you think it takes to be successful in this career?
Sample excellent response:
I believe successful salespeople put forth that extra effort that turns potential clients into first-time customers. Salespeople who, attend to the details by doing whatever it takes to win over a prospective customer distinguish themselves from the countless others who don’t go to any extra effort. Second, I think that if you label success as an attainable goal, you will never consistently remain successful. You can only succeed if you learn all there is to learn about your product, your competitors, and personal selling. Since this learning process is continuous, it’s an unattainable goal. With good reason, salespeople should not consider success an attainable ending point but an objective that will always linger slightly beyond their reach.

How do you determine or evaluate success? Give me an example of one of your successful accomplishments.
Sample excellent response:
Last semester I was hired by university’s Council for Student Activities. The group negotiates contracts of entertainers, sets up sound equipment, markets the entertainers to students, and generally decides what kind of programming should be done. When I got hired, I didn’t know the first thing about how fill any of those responsibilities. I decided, however, that I wasn’t going to fail. Four months later, I have become the Webmaster for the group. I also write our campus newsletter and created Game Night, a student competition of table games. That event yielded the biggest audience ever for a non-concert event.

What has been your most rewarding accomplishment?
Sample excellent response:
A recent satisfying accomplishment I was sent to one of our branch banks that was notorious for not growing their loan base. The branch had logged $75,000 in new loans in an 18-month period prior to my arrival. Having a reputation as a “hired gun” when it came to loan production I was successful in the solicitation and booking of $700,000 in my first six months at the branch.

Are you more energized by working with data or by collaborating with other individuals?
Sample excellent response:
I like the validity of information and also like the energy that comes with working with people. The best thing about working in a group is combining the great minds from different perspectives and coming up with something extremely great, compared with when you’re working alone. At the same time, information can generate vitality in the project you’re working on. No matter how many heads you’ve got together, without information. You can’t go very far. The perfect situation would be a combination of working with information and people, and I’m confident of my abilities in both.

How would you describe yourself in terms of your ability to work as a member of a team?
Sample excellent response:
I have had many opportunities in both athletics and academics to develop my skills as a team player. My tenure as a rower with my college’s crew team serves as a good example. I learned a great deal about teamwork while rowing because all the rowers in the boat must act as one, which meant that we incessantly worked to keep each movement in the boat synchronized. On an individual basis, we still worked toward group goals through weightlifting and land-rowing. My experience as a marketing research team leader also helped me to learn the role of “team player”. I viewed my position as that of group leader and of group member. I ensured that everyone in the group had equal opportunity to contribute, maintained excellent communication among group members, and coordinated their energies toward reaching our team’s goal.

What motivates you to put forth you greatest effort?
Sample excellent response:
You would think that because I am interested in sales, only financial compensation would motivate me to achieve. Although monetary rewards are important to me, I am driven to succeed internally. More than anything, I want to be respected by my friends and coworkers for being the best at what I do. Whether I am considered to be the best car detailer in my hometown or the best columnist for my college newspaper, I want to be recognized as the best.

Given the investment our company will make in hiring and training you, can you give us a reason to hire you?
Sample excellent response:
I sincerely believe that I’m the best person for the job. I realize that there are many other college students who have the ability to do this job. I also have that ability. But I also bring an additional quality that makes me the very best person for the job -- my attitude for excellence. Not just giving lip service to excellence, but putting every part of myself into achieving it. In college and at my previous jobs, I have consistently reached for becoming the very best I can become. I think my leadership awards from my college, and my management positions are the result of possessing the qualities you’re looking for in an employee.

Describe what you’ve accomplished toward reaching a recent goal for yourself.
Sample excellent response:
My first few years in banking had me on the fast track to branch management. I realized at some point along the way that my true passion was in offering financial advice not limited to checking accounts and loans, It was at that point that I made the necessary arrangements to go back to school full-time to pursue my goal, which I am just about to achieve.

What do you expect to be doing in five years?
Sample excellent response:
Although it is hard to predict the future, I sincerely believe that I will become a very good financial consultant. I believe that my abilities will allow me to excel to the point that I can seek other opportunities as a portfolio manager (the next step) and possibly even higher. My ultimate goal continues to be -- and will always be -- to be the best at whatever level I am working at within Merrill Lynch’s corporate structure.

How would you evaluate your ability to deal with conflict?
Sample excellent response:
I believe I am quite good at handling conflict. Working in retail and in the residence halls required that I make many unpopular decisions at times, whether it was terminating an associate or taking judicial action on a resident. Often the person in conflict with me would be upset and sometimes physically outraged. I would always make sure that I fully explained the situation, the policies behind my decision, and why those policies exist. Usually by the end of the conversation, the person could see the other side of the situation.

Would you say that you can easily deal with high-pressure situations?
Sample excellent response:
Yes. My past experience as an Administrative Coordinator required me to deal with many serious situations since I held emergency on-call duties as a supervisor. One example was when I was called by a Resident Assistant to deal with an attempted suicide on her residence hail floor. The situation required that I think clearly and quickly in this life-and-death situation. I had to weigh the many tasks that needed to be completed. I had to assign RAs to call 911, make sure that EMS could get into the locked building, while the time applying first aid, and ensuring that the rest of the residents on the floor were OK. I also had to make sure the privacy of the resident in need was respected. I basically prioritized and dealt with each task by as importance. I delegated responsibility to RAs for things that they were capable of handling because I could not physically be in many places at once. Once the resident was taken to the hospital, I was responsible for paperwork and follow up to make sure the staff members, residents, and the resident-in-need adjusted back to ¡°normal¡± life. I know this is an extreme example not found in the financial consulting field; however, it shows just how well I can deal with extreme pressure.

How will the academic program and coursework you’ve taken benefit your career?
Sample excellent response (response is very specific to the job he is interviewing for):
As you will note on my resume, I’ve taken not only the required core classes for the finance field, I’ve also gone above and beyond by double majoring in accounting. I doubled majored since I knew that the financial consulting field requires much knowledge of portfolio analysis and understanding of the tax laws. I believe that my success in both areas of study have specifically prepared me for this area. But it’s not just taking the classes in these two areas that allows me to offer Merrill Lynch clients more. I minored in Spanish to understand the growing Hispanic clientele in the Central Florida area, which as you are well aware, is a growing source of revenue for the industry. If you like, I can elaborate on other aspects of my education further.

double_fish

woo, 三个字：强、详、洋！

sd000

谢谢楼主！有答案就可以照猫画虎了，加分！

茄菲

详细，加分了。

PeterWay

+

yoocool

真不错,赶紧收藏起来.

yddlx

好东东，收藏起来

hemmingway619

thanks!

allen007

有答案就可以照猫画虎了，加分！ding!

刘放

lucy1979

excellent article!!!

Docklands

it really helpful !

迷失@森林

it's pretty damn good!
thx for sharing!

jue_wang999

谢谢,可是做好事不留名?

clini

收藏

Christina

辛苦了!

xxxx

很实用的帖子，找到工作一定感谢楼主

yddlx

谢谢楼主 ！！！！

Allul

谢谢楼主 嘎嘎～