Based on my experience in interviews I come out with six commonly asked question, the exact questions may not exactly be the same but it will somewhere around it. So be prepared to have an model answer before going for interview.
1) Tell me about yourself.
2) Tell me about your previous job.
3) What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
4) What do you do during your leisure time & what's your hobby?
5) Why should we hire you?
6) Why do you want to join us?
I think the hardest question is the weaknesses and why should they hire you, as a result this is something you have to spend time to prepare and are not the kind of questions where you could come out with a good answers on the spot. Don't you worry I will give my model answers to you, it may not works perfectly for you as these were aimed to be aligned with my résumé and my character, hence alter it where necessary.
Tell me about yourself.
- Firstly, I would like to thank you for giving this wonderful opportunity and it's my pleasure to introduce myself.
- My name is XYZ, I'm xx this year. I've just finished my last few papers in ACCA. At present I'm pending for my result and seek for a job opportunity to utilize my skills and experience gained from my previous job and my study.
- I would like to describe myself as self-motivated, always love to learn new things and to be challenged. I believe I can work independently, adapt well in new environment and able to handle stressful situation and heavy workload.(don't just say what you think you are, remember conviction comes from life example)
- For example I'd been taking up part-time study during my national service time and in my previous job, for a period about four years. I believe these have exposed me to managing multiple appointments at once and had prepared me for this challenging role.
Basically the answer to this is rather simple as you just have to tell them where you coming from, your character and a little bit of how it makes you a good fit for the role.
Tell me about your previous job.
The answer for this is varied so I will not be touching on this area. Nevertheless the rule of thumb is to align your answer in a way that your interviewers think that your previous experience will be beneficial to the role even if you do not have relevant experience, you can always bring in transferable skills e.g communication, meticulousness, problem-solving skill and etc. that you have attained in your last job, and how it helps in this job. Remember they may ask you to give an example.
What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
- I'm a quality-conscious person, when I do things I don't just want to get it done but also get it right. I'm not someone who will cut corner and get short term benefit at the expense of long term.
- I'm also very result-orientated, I take my own performance very seriously. I'm someone who will constantly on the outlook of not just improving myself but also looking for ways to improve the business process that I involved with.
(Weaknesses)
- You see, not everybody treat their role as serious as I do like I want to get it right instead of just done. In consequence some may find it hard to understand me or even disagree with me. From what I have learnt is that I need to focus on the big picture by prioritize the tasks at hand and to some extent I may have to compromise.
Again, be prepared they may ask you for an example.
What do you do during your leisure time & what's your hobby?
- I like reading and love to learn new things(constant with above), for example for the past few weeks I've been trying to improve my Mandarin and English in area such as pronunciation and vocabulary as I feel that my command of languages are still far from native speaker level. This is something I look forward to improve at which I believe will provide me a competitive advantage over others in my future career progression.(constantly looking for ways to improve my self)
Never put your guard down on these questions, informal questions are at best catching the intrinsic personality of yours, yes interview is like acting on the stage your job is to show the best sides of you and theirs is to catch your foxy-tail by throwing some innocent-like questions. As a result you definitely would not want to say something like going to Starbucks chilling up with friends, catching the latest SNSD's news, meeting up with gf/bf and bla bla bla.Be creative and flexible in here, if the role required high level of team work & leadership you may even say thing like you always organize outing with your friends . You should view these questions as a channel to promote yourself.
Why should we hire you?
- I believe I have great problem-solving and communication skills. I'm very open to ideals which enable me to look at issue in various perspectives. I do think that I'll be great value add to the organization, although I'm still consider fresh in this working world but I do think that I'm able to contribute fresh perspective to the organization and look at problems with fresh pair of eyes, where possible, make recommendation and improve it.
- You see I can't prove to you anything now but what I can assure you is that, if I were to be hired for this role, I will do my very best to exceed your expectation.
I love this question as it's like cut off the crap, so now tell me, convince me, psycho me why you and not others. If you run out of ideal just tell them that because you put up an job advert looking for the job to be filled and here I come.
Why do you want to join us?
- Despite the 2 years of commercial experience and my lack of relevant experience in this role. I'm still consider a fresher.
- I want and I need a platform where I can improve my skills and prove myself, XYZ being the world's largest bla bla bla firm which I do believe it has great culture, system and I.T that I could expose to and people with great skills & expertise that I can learnt from. It will be a great opportunity for my career advancement, with that, this is the organization I want to be in.
In addition to that you may like to ask some of the following questions:
- Do the company encourage professional development e.g are there training budget.
- How would you describe the working culture over here?
- What is the employee size of this organization/dept/team?
- If I perform really well, what will my career prospect be like in 2-3 years time.
That is it do drop me comment & feedback on below if you have any questions.
Thanks for reading
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
First job offer
One week ago I got an interview with a finance director over Skype, I'm in Singapore and the FD was in UK. They need someone to manage their accounts and administrative works as they have decided to set up its own accounting function which was used to outsourced, the reason according to the FD was that the external accountancy firm was making a mess.
2 days after the interview a guy(Mr.F) from the recruitment agency phoned me to check whether I'm interested for the role and told me that the FD was very impressed with my interview and convinced that I'm able to work independently. He also asked me about my expected salary, I indirectly quoted $2,800 and I said its hard for me to give an exact figure unless I have more information such as bonus.
The very next day Ms.AL contacted me to fix an appointment which ended on the afternoon. During the interview she asked me whether I'm interested for the role which I replied yes, as I see it as a great opportunity for learning. She than asked my expected salary, again I didn't give an exact figure. Finally she told me the offer was $2700. I was disappointed which thinking back I realized I'm over optimistic, I anticipated the offer would start from $2900 where I could negotiate higher. My "model answer" did not include the offer she gave me.
I responded "The offer is lower than what I have expected, I would like to ask what flexibility there is", she said she will get back to the FD and mentioned that they had tried to ask for $3000 but according to the FD due to my inexperience in accounts role they had anticipated that training had to be given, as a result they would offer $2700. But nevertheless Ms.AL will let the FD know my concern and get back to me by Monday as the day of interview was on Friday.
Monday morning the time they usually called me, no call received. Evening as well no call received.
Tuesday no call received. I did sense something wrong but could not figure out as I thought that the worst would be the offer remain the same.
Wednesday, just 20mins before my interview I received a call from MS.AL. From the start of our conversation she wasn't sound clear explaining about the current situation as she tried to be as tactful as possible. I came to realize that the offer remain at $2,700 if you still call it an offer and unexpectedly my salary negotiation has led to the offer being jeopardized.Therefore the offer did not exist anymore!
She said the FD felt that candidate like me who negotiated salary would not last in the company for long and I would constantly seeking for other job that pay more. Additionally she did not want to underpay me. In the end I told MS.AL that I'm interested on the offer.
So what have I learned? not to negotiate if this is what you are thinking. No! I don't think it this way. and yes, salary negotiating entail risk of offer being jeopardized. This is the risk I chose to undertake and the degree of risk associated will largely depend on my negotiating skill. I'm of the opinion that the loss I suffered by not negotiating will by far exceed the loss resultant in salary negotiation like the above.
2 days after the interview a guy(Mr.F) from the recruitment agency phoned me to check whether I'm interested for the role and told me that the FD was very impressed with my interview and convinced that I'm able to work independently. He also asked me about my expected salary, I indirectly quoted $2,800 and I said its hard for me to give an exact figure unless I have more information such as bonus.
The very next day Ms.AL contacted me to fix an appointment which ended on the afternoon. During the interview she asked me whether I'm interested for the role which I replied yes, as I see it as a great opportunity for learning. She than asked my expected salary, again I didn't give an exact figure. Finally she told me the offer was $2700. I was disappointed which thinking back I realized I'm over optimistic, I anticipated the offer would start from $2900 where I could negotiate higher. My "model answer" did not include the offer she gave me.
I responded "The offer is lower than what I have expected, I would like to ask what flexibility there is", she said she will get back to the FD and mentioned that they had tried to ask for $3000 but according to the FD due to my inexperience in accounts role they had anticipated that training had to be given, as a result they would offer $2700. But nevertheless Ms.AL will let the FD know my concern and get back to me by Monday as the day of interview was on Friday.
Monday morning the time they usually called me, no call received. Evening as well no call received.
Tuesday no call received. I did sense something wrong but could not figure out as I thought that the worst would be the offer remain the same.
Wednesday, just 20mins before my interview I received a call from MS.AL. From the start of our conversation she wasn't sound clear explaining about the current situation as she tried to be as tactful as possible. I came to realize that the offer remain at $2,700 if you still call it an offer and unexpectedly my salary negotiation has led to the offer being jeopardized.Therefore the offer did not exist anymore!
She said the FD felt that candidate like me who negotiated salary would not last in the company for long and I would constantly seeking for other job that pay more. Additionally she did not want to underpay me. In the end I told MS.AL that I'm interested on the offer.
So what have I learned? not to negotiate if this is what you are thinking. No! I don't think it this way. and yes, salary negotiating entail risk of offer being jeopardized. This is the risk I chose to undertake and the degree of risk associated will largely depend on my negotiating skill. I'm of the opinion that the loss I suffered by not negotiating will by far exceed the loss resultant in salary negotiation like the above.
Who am I
I shall do a short introduction of myself. I'm 25 this year, just finished the last four papers of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants(ACCA), so at present I'm on the job search. Before that I had worked in a healthcare organization for account receivable, decided to leave the company after 2 years of my contribution to pursue my remaining papers for the next 1.5years.
The purpose of this blog is for my self-reflection on the things that I have learned, it could be anythings from study to interview and to work. Personal finance will also be part of it once I got a job. So at present you may expect me to post topic around things that I've leaned from interview, this will include answering call from hiring manager, script that I have used for interview and lastly salary negotiation.
The purpose of this blog is for my self-reflection on the things that I have learned, it could be anythings from study to interview and to work. Personal finance will also be part of it once I got a job. So at present you may expect me to post topic around things that I've leaned from interview, this will include answering call from hiring manager, script that I have used for interview and lastly salary negotiation.
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