By Elaine Bellio, Toronto Sales Recruiter
Your resume is what will get you a call back for an interview, but the job interview itself is your time to shine and show that you are the right person for the job. This also means you need to be prepared to answer a plethora of questions about your experience, skills, and potential employer. And you never know which questions they are going to ask until you sit down for the interview.
“You can never be certain which questions an interviewer will ask, but coming prepared with answers to some of the toughest interview questions will keep you calm, cool, and collected, and give you a leg up on the competition,” says Rhys Metler, one of our Toronto Sales Recruiters, in 13 Tough Interview Questions & How to Handle Them.
Job Interviews Boil Down to Three General Questions
While it would be great to know they type of interview questions you will be asked, the truth is that many of the questions you will be asked are predictable, and they are somewhat similar. Bernard Marr, a global enterprise performance expert, believes that amid the endless possibilities of questions you could be asked in an interview, there are only three types of interview questions that matter:
1. Have you got the skills, expertise and experience to perform the job?
2. Are you enthusiastic and interested in the job and the company?
3. Will you fit into the team, culture and company?
These are essentially the three main things that an interviewer wants to take away from the interview. These three questions can take on a number of forms and have a series of sub-questions attached to them, but this is, at its core, what you should be prepared to discuss with a hiring manager during an interview.
The Most Frequently Asked Job Interview Questions
Thanks to Glassdoor, we actually have some insight into the type of questions that companies are asking in job interviews. According to their research, here are the top 20 interview questions:
- What are your strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
- Why are you interested in working for [insert company name here]?
- Where do you see yourself in five years? 10 years?
- Why do you want to leave your current company?
- Why was there a gap in your employment?
- What can you offer us that someone else cannot?
- What are three things your former manager would like you to improve on?
- Are you willing to relocate?
- Are you willing to travel?
- Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
- Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
- What is your dream job?
- How did you hear about this position?
- What would you look to accomplish in the first 30 days/60 days/90 days on the job?
- Discuss your résumé.
- Discuss your educational background.
- Describe yourself.
- Tell me how you handled a difficult situation.
- Why should we hire you?
Expect some version of these questions. Combine this with the advice from Marr and the posts from our recruiting experts, and you should have no trouble preparing for your next job interview.
Here is some more useful headhunter insights you can find on our recruiter blog that will help you prepare for your next job interview:
15 Recruiter Insights for Preparing for a Job Interview
How to Describe a Weakness in an Interview with a Recruiter
13 Tips from a Headhunter on How to Ace a Phone Interview
Be Careful What You Say! The Real Effects of Badmouthing in an Interview
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IQ PARTNERS is an Executive Search & Recruitment firm with offices in Toronto and Vancouver. We help companies hire better, hire less & retain more. We have specialist teams of recruiters in Financial Services & Insurance, Marketing Communications & Media, Emerging Tech & Telecom, Consumer Goods & Retail, B2B & Industrial, Technology, Accounting & Finance, HR & Operations and Mining & Engineering. IQ PARTNERS has its head office in Toronto and operates internationally via Aravati Global Search Network. Click here to view current job openings and to register with us.
