The best way to prepare for an interview is to practice your answers to common questions that interviewers might ask. Additionally, you can make a good impression by highlighting desirable traits like your accomplishments, skills and ability to manage high priority tasks.

1. Introduce yourself? This is the most common question which a candidate never thinks to be asked. He/she somehow does not prepare itself to answer this simple question. This question is asked to know about candidate’s back ground and personality, personal history related to previous job. Whatever is written in resume is not sufficient for the interviewer therefore; this question refers to the answer which is not in black and white.
2. Tell about your Strength and Weaknesses? This question is quite significant at both sides. For an interviewer, the answer would help to choose the best candidate because here the candidate tells about his/her strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It will ease the task if the interviewer gets the correct answers which he needs for the company. On the contrary, the interviewee must prepare itself to answer this question, because before preparing an interview, everyone must know about its strengths and weaknesses.

Always tell the strengths which you have in yourself rather than telling about those which the interviewer wants to hear. In order to cover the weaknesses, a candidate must answer smartly. For example: a candidate may answer like “My biggest weakness is getting so absorbed in my work that I lose all track of time. Every day I look up and realize everyone has gone home! I know I should be more aware of the clock, but when I love what I’m doing I just can’t think of anything else.”

3. Why do you want to work with our company? This question is again pretty common in interview, and this situation is created to beware of the candidate’s interest in the company. A candidate must start with its position rather than flattering the company. He/ She must think deeply and then answer his / her passion for the opened post and then should discuss about the company’s name or environment.
4. How do you see yourself in next five years? Understanding how you imagine your life in the future can help employers understand whether the trajectory of the role and company fits in with your personal development goals. So a candidate should reveal its potential and incredible goals by giving extremely optimistic answer.
5. Why should we hire you out of all other candidates? This question is again a chance for a candidate to prove him/herself that he/she is the best fit for the job. Here a candidate must use some tactics because he/she cannot compare him/herself from the people they do not know. All a candidate can do is describing his/her incredible passion, desire and commitment.
6. How do you know about this job? The interviewer is keen to know the source from where a candidate came across the job. This is exactly the point where a candidate must show his/her interest in job. Job boards, general postings, online listings, job fairs etc. are common answers tobe given. So a candidate doesn’t just explain how he/she heard about the opening. He/she must show that he/she heard about the job through a colleague, a current employer, by following the company etc because the employer is not interested in those people who just need “a job”; they want to hire the people who want a job in “their” company.
7. What is the reason to leave your current job? This question is very crucial to ask because an interviewer will have clear information about a candidate’s past employer or through his/ her answer he can judge the authenticity of his/hers previous job. Here a candidate must become cautious, because there are several reasons for leaving a job, always go for the answer which remains in candidate’s favour.

Published in The Daily National Courier, February, 14 2023

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