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Job Interview: How to answer personal questions.

Date: Apr 17 2009

Author: nad1a

Lesson

One question that you are always going to get at a job interview is "Tell me about yourself". That sounds like an easy thing to talk about. It is open ended and you may think that you can talk about anything you want.

Although this is often supposed to be an ice-breaker and put you at ease, it's still a job interview, not a casual conversation. There's nothing wrong about wanting to give a feel of who you are and what you are interested in but, after all, you are there to convince that person that you are the right candidate for this job. So the best thing you can do while introducing yourself is try to connect that information to the job you are interviewing for. Point out how your personality fits the job you're trying to land.

Watch this video of an expert's advice on how exactly to approach this type of questions that often sound personal but are supposed to be taken more profesionally.

Script:

"I'm Don Varney of Varney Speaks and on behalf of Expert Village. Today we're going to talk about the interview process. Let's take a moment and talk about some of the types of questions that you could be asked during the interview process. Sometimes the questions are misleading because we're taking them personally when they're really talking professionally. A good example would be if they were to say to you, tell me about yourself. You're sitting there saying, well I like to go hunting on the weekends. I like to go camping and take my family fishing, and I really enjoy that. Well, great answer, but that's not what they're asking. When they say tell me about yourself, they are asking you to tell them about yourself in this job environment. They want to hear I enjoy coming to work with people that I get around and I have a good time with. I like an atmosphere of friendliness. Your company being a company that specializes in public relations and customer service, well this is the environment that I like and it would work well for me to work well in your environment. That would be in line with what they're really asking when they say tell me about yourself. When they ask about strengths and weaknesses, again, they're not asking you for you to really tell them I'm very good at this and I'm weak at this, but in essence, they may be asking you about how that would apply to the work force, to the workplace where you are actually going to go to work. One of the simplest examples is you might say, I was told early on in my career that listening was a weakness. I didn't listen very well because I was always ready to answer whatever it was they were saying. The good news was they were right and I figured that out, so what I've done now is I've taken a weakness of not listening very well. I've taken classes on it, I've read books on it, I've done studies on it, and over the last few years what I've determined is I really wasn't a good listener, but now I really trained myself to understand the importance to listening to the person before I try to answer."

Interactive multiple choice and listening comprehension quiz.