.png){kind=logo}
Written by Community Contributor Nicole Murphy, Lead Ninja, Recruiting Ninjas
And she's back! Our resident recruiting guru, Nicole Murphy, from Recruiting Ninjas, is back and ready to serve up more tips to help us land our dream jobs.
This month's scenario: You've aced your first round of interviews (congrats!) with the HR screener and now it's time to meet the hiring team. What kinds of questions are they going to ask? How should you respond? What should you ask them?
Read on to find out!
What will the interviewer ask you?
Now that you know about the company and possibly the people you will be interviewing with what are they going to ask you?! Below are some sample questions commonly asked during interviews:
Tell us about your career journey.
Why are you looking for a new job?
What change have you made that resulted in an improved customer/client experience?
What's an example of a time you showed initiative at work?
What type of challenge or conflict have you faced at work and how did you handle it?
Can you talk about a time you failed and how you rebounded after that failure?
What is something interesting about yourself that is not on your resume?
How do you approach problems? Can you walk through your process?
What do you enjoy about working on a team?
Can you describe your ideal team dynamic?
Answer: The Star Method
Now that you have some sample questions, how are you going to answer them?! The STAR method to answering questions is a great place to start: The STAR method is an acronym for Situation Task Action Result.
Example:
Question: Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult situation.
Situation: Our project manager and other team members were pointing fingers at recruiting for open positions.
Task: Get candidates. Except, we already had the candidates, but we were waiting on the government part of their security clearances.
Action: How do I show where the bottleneck is? I created a spreadsheet that detailed the hiring process from the first day of candidate outreach to the start date.
Result: Once this data was presented, the project manager could reach out to the government and ask for updates on the clearances, and it was an easy way to provide very clear updates in meetings
Practice is Key: Grow with Google
Another great interview tool is Interview Warmup - Grow with Google. You answer questions out loud and it gives you insights into your answer such as:
Job-related terms used
Your most used words
Talking points you covered
This will also help you build confidence in your responses. Recruiters and hiring managers like candidates who can answer questions confidently and seamlessly.
Some companies also have interview prep tips on their website. Here are two:
Interviews are a 2-way street
You are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. A few great questions to ask:
What does success look like in this role?
How do you measure success in this role?
What are some of the challenges/roadblocks for the team?
What will my day-to-day look like?
Why is this position open?
What is the ramp time?
What are the primary responsibilities of this position?
How does this role contribute to your company’s success?
What is the most important thing I could help within the first 90 days of employment?
What does growth look like at your company?
What is your favorite part of working here? (The answer to this question is very telling about the team and company.)
For more job tips, from Recruiting Ninjas, read "Job tips from an expert."
Nicole Murphy, the lead Ninja from Recruiting Ninjas, has been in the recruiting industry for eight years!
She loves providing great experiences to candidates and hiring teams. She's been a recruiter for technical positions (like software, DevOps, and test engineers) for most of her career. The best thing about her job: Extending an offer that changes someone’s life!
Are you interested in being a DWKC Connection Community Contributor? Contact us!