Depending upon your individual circumstances, here are five tougher, stressful questions you may encounter during an interview.
- Why were you fired? This is the toughest question you will have to answer during a job interview. Your answer must have substance; you can't gloss over something this important or respond in a way that fails to satisfy the person who is asking it.
Don't offer excuses. Acknowledge what has happened to you. Whether you were fired or officially laid off is of little consequence most of the time. If you insist you were laid off as opposed to being fired, a tough interviewer can come right back at you by asking an even tougher question: "You'd been with the company for five years. They laid off ten percent of the managerial staff. Why do you think you got laid off instead of someone who's still there?"
Try to give the real reason you were laid off without sounding as if you are making excuses and without making yourself look bad. For example, if you had a personality conflict with your boss or your style of management didn't match the company's style of management; discuss this without either putting yourself down or bad-mouthing your ex-employer. You might say of a company whose management style turned out not to match your own: "As you may recall, Tom Smith was CEO when I went to work for ABC, Inc. About two years later, he left-he was fired just as I was-and Ed Jones came in to run the company. While he did an excellent job, and I learned a great deal from him, from the beginning we didn't see eye to eye on how to manage a company. He wanted me to push my sales staff harder and cut incentives at the same time. I understand that he was brought in as a belt-tightener, and I agree that there was room to cut fat, but I don't think you start with your sales staff. I think they're the lifeblood of an organization. I guess I opposed him too vigorously. At least a year ago, I saw that we were never going to see eye to eye on management matters. I have nothing personal against him, and I think he would say the same thing about me-so I geared up to look for a job. It's a coincidence that they cut staff before I started to actively look for a job."
In giving this response, you have done several important things: First, you presented a concrete example of what was wrong. That will help your cause tremendously, much more than vague excuses ever will. Second, you described the source of the problem: new management and conflicting management styles. Third, you indicated that the differences were professional, not personal. This shows you do not have a personality problem and won't have interpersonal problems on your next job. Few employers want to take a chance on someone with ongoing personality problems, and getting fired always raises a red flag in this department. Fourth, you showed that you were doing something about-or learning something from-the challenge. In this case, the person said she was already looking for a job at the time she got fired because she was aware of the conflict. In other circumstances, you might say that you knew you had a difficult boss, but you still felt you were learning things, so you wanted to stay a little longer.
- Why are you changing careers? This is a trick question. It is not so much that employers object to career changes as they want proof that you can handle a job in a new field. But-and here's what makes the question tricky-the way to convince someone is not to point out that there really aren't that many differences between the two fields, although this is often the case since management skills are management skills and can, in theory and in practice, be applied anywhere. One woman who had successfully changed careers and had at the same time moved from the public to the private sector, described the best way to respond: "I found that employers like you to list the similarities between the fields, but they also want you to recognize that they're different. In fact, if you stress that there won't be any difficulty, and say that you think the jobs will be pretty much the same, the person interviewing you often feels you aren't being realistic. You really have to tell the person you think this company is unique, and that although you think you will work very well in this culture, you also think there will be some adjustment involved."
Another person, a man who transferred from university administration to publishing, noted, "If you're making a career change, you have to explain and also be responsive to the person interviewing you.” You have to make the change sound concrete and reasonable not just to yourself but also to someone who will want to hire you. You can't just say you had a vision in the night even if you did. You have to say something plausible to them-plausible, that is, from the employer's perspective."
If there will be some real problems in making the switch from one field to another, discuss them with the employer, but follow up by saying that you have always enjoyed learning new things and have always picked up new information quickly, and that you don't expect to have any problems doing so this time. Stress your flexibility and how much you enjoy and rise to a challenge. If possible, almost in passing, offer a concrete example, such as the time in college when you changed your major from eighteenth-century literature to astrophysics and still made the dean's list, or the summer you spent immersed in a completely new culture so you could master a new language.
- Why have you changed jobs so often? This question makes most people feel somewhat defensive, although it shouldn't. Frequent job changes used to be a negative on someone's resume, but it's just not much of a problem today, as Janet Tweed pointed out: "There are certain industries where there is a lot of job-hopping. A person can have seven jobs in a career and nothing is thought of it. I'm not too concerned about the job-hopper if he gets in, gets good experience, realizes he's blocked because of one reason or another or is too challenged, and then moves onward and upward."
Tweed said that a series of brief job stints does sometime: raise a questioning eyebrow, but that it is one that can be explained away by describing what has happened and how you learned from your mistakes: "I think that my first job was problematic. I took the job right out of school, didn't look into the situation as carefully as I would now, jumped into it, and had to admit that I didn't use good judgment. When I realized that I wasn't the only one who was unhappy with the company, I took another job as quickly as I could. In a sense, I guess I fell into that job, too. But I realized early that it was wrong for me. Before changing, though, I did a lot of thinking, planning, and discussing, and today I'm quite clear about what I want."
- Why are your earnings so low? This question is especially asked of women, who often confirm, when they go job hunting, what they have long suspected: They are being paid less than their male counterparts. Sometimes, the question is a surprise to a woman; more often, a woman knew all along that she was being paid less than the industry standard. Either way, according to Kathryn Steckert, her answer should be the same: "I think it's obvious that I'm underpaid, and that I'm worth far more. In fact, I expect to be paid up to my full value on my next job. I took lower salaries because they led to the jobs I wanted and enabled me to get experience I might not otherwise have gotten. I now feel, however, that I've done my work in the trenches, and I expect to be paid what I'm worth for my experience and expertise."
- Why have you been looking for a job so long? Of course, how long you have been looking for a job is absolutely relative. To someone who has never been out of a job, two weeks of looking seems like too long. For someone who has been fired or laid off, six weeks seems like a reasonable amount of time, considering all the thinking, planning, and preparing that is required to set up a professional job search you weren't expecting to be involved in. Experts say an executive should anticipate being out of work one week for every $10,000 of his or her last salary. That means that an $80,000-a-year person will need a minimum of eight weeks to find a job, that someone earning $150,000 should brace themselves for a search of roughly fifteen weeks.
Now that this question has been put in perspective for you, you are ready to put it into perspective for the person who asks you about it. As with all tough questions, answer as honestly as possible while putting yourself in a good light: "I spent three weeks in planning and research. I wanted to be very certain of which direction I wanted to go this time, so I spent many hours in the local library and talking to various people about my future, as well as about my specific skills and talents. Since I started looking actively, I've been offered several jobs, but haven't found the one that is exactly what I'm looking for. While I'm eager to settle in somewhere, I'm not panicked and I don't want to jeopardize my career. I'm prepared to wait until I find the right job." An answer like this is beautiful because it turns what could have become a negative for you into a positive: you have taken so long to find a job because you're so valuable and such a good planner that you don't intend to make a mistake.
As you have probably observed by now, the toughest question about the touchiest areas of your career must always be turned around to your personal advantage. The trick to answering tough questions successfully is to respond in an upbeat, positive manner.
See the following articles for more information:
- How to Start on the Right Foot in Your New Job
- What Are the Sources to Find the Information You Need
- The Background of Application Process
- How to Network and Take an Information Interview
