ego.istic.org

Orphi blogged today about his forthcoming job interview, with some worries about the usual sort of questions that get asked at these affairs. I have heard the same advice repeated time and again, so I present the distillation of it. This was originally to be a comment on his post, but broken anti-spam measures ate it three times, so it is here instead.

So why do you want to work for our company?

The usual answer is that your current position doesn't offer the sort of challenges you're looking for. Combine this with some bumf off their website about how they are dynamic or friendly or whatever. If you're feeling brash, then a possible answer is to turn it around: “You tell me, why should I work for your company?” It takes some style to pull this one off.

So where do you see yourself in five years' time?

I still don't know how to answer this one. At my last job interview, I said that I would like to gain the experience to allow me to take on more complex challenges, to become someone within the company who others come to and trust for technical advice, but that I could be flexible and fit into whatever niche the company had to offer. It worked for me!

So what makes you the right person for the role?

Jim is spot-on here. You have lots of experience in IT working in a challenging and fast-moving enterprise environment, writing and maintaining in-house tools for administration and business tasks. You quickly learn new ideas and ways of working quickly, and can interact with non-technical users to discover their requirements.

How do you see the industry progressing in the future?

You see the market growing over the next few years because of [insert reason here]. Whatever you do, don't say it's going to stagnate or lose out. Find out what sort of people buy their product - farmers, graphic designers, bureaucrats - and make up some reason why they're going to be wanting more now than ever before - because farmers face increasing overseas competition, because short turnaround times for marketing materials are increasingly important, or because people are collecting increasing amounts of data and need their offices to store and analyse it. Note which word all three of those had in common.

What would you say is your greatest weakness?

As Jim said, be honest. Don't say “I work too hard” or anything pat and trite like that. If you really can't think of a way to turn your weakness into a strength, you could say "I used to have trouble with..." and then explain how you have overcome it.

What would you say is your greatest strength?

Make sure it's a character strength, or a transferable skill, rather than something traditionally seen as a skill. Being calm under pressure is a good example, depending on what sort of job it is. I always give mine as being able to absorb information quickly and when there is little available, and apply this to problems. I have a good example of a time I have used this, and I can relate my other skills to it.

A job interview is a protocol, like chess or like buying a pint: only the aim is different. The interviewer asks you questions, and in response to each you give an answer that complies with the form expected but whose content is a reason why it is worth their while to hire you in particular. Each of these standard questions has a standard format for the answer, but what's in the answer itself is specific to you and aims to distinguish you from other candidates. It all gets easier once you realise that the format of the answer and the reason you are actually giving are utterly unrelated.