midget1500

i hate the HR "textbook answer" type questions.

was at an interview with a very large international accountancy firm and they came out with crackers like

"tell us about your education so far..."

don't mind the ones about how you handle conflict etc, easy enough but ones like that just make me go blank!

there were loads of other totally open jobbies - are they looking for specific answers or just to see how you handle it?

steven

midget1500

don't all answer at once

SJ_Skyline

There are no wrong answers to open ended questions apart from the obvious such as listing religion fundamentalism and drug use as your "other interests".

My favourite that I always use in an interview is "So, tell me about yourself." Totally nasty and underhand and throws the candidate 99.9% of the time.

IMHO the best way to prepare for an interview where you are likely to be asked open ended questions is to relax as best you can, take your time answering using pauses to think ahead and not always have a positive response for every question - not everybody has done everything.


Hope that helps!

Rich

Edited to actually answer the question: It is not to see how right or wrong you are but to see both how you react under pressure and how you tackle the situation.

[Edited by SJ_Skyline - 9/15/2003 4:02:23 PM]

midget1500

rich,

cheers. i'm pretty calm and can talk away - but i always fear that what i'm saying isn't relevant.

like, tell me about yourself - when you are in an interview and focused (say, for technical questions) this just makes you go blank and waffle (i fail to see the point of this - i tend to just mention uni/hobbies and how they are relevant to the job)

steven

ajm

Just answer the questions honestly and concisely. If he asks "tell me about yourself" just give a brief summary of who you are, what you like doing, what you want to do etc. You shouldnt neccessarily try and turn every answer into a justification for giving you the job because it looks obvious and a little desparate.

Their next question will most likely be more specific and pick up on something that you have mentioned about yourself. I.e. if you had said that you enjoyed team sports he might follow up with "you said you enjoy team sports, how would you say you get on as a member of a team" blah blah

Personally, having been the interviewer on quite a few occasions, I think HR type questions are too vague. At the end of the day they should be asking questions that will tell them whether you can do the job. If they are asking airy fairt questions it s usually a sign that:-

a) the interviewer is an HR person and doesn't really understand the job he is interviewing for
b) the interviewer hasn't prepared adequatley and is trying to get you do give him cues for questions.

Either way, rather than being scared of them asking the questions, you can be confident because they have effectively given you control of the interview!

midget1500

ajm - "the interviewer is an HR person and doesn't really understand the job he is interviewing for"

this was the case, the person was head of HR of an accountacy firm interviewing for a technical position (database stuff) and had technical questions listed but obviously didn't know the answers (then asking me to not give technical answers!). the whole thing just threw me off (but i'm sure it didn't come across).

god i hate HR questions i prefer technical ones!

Flyboy-F33

The standard answer to 'Tell me about yourself: is firstly to turn the question around by saying "Which aspect of my life would you be particularly interested in hearing about"? This gets them to be more specific and prevents you from waffling on about stuff they are not in the slightest bit interested in.

Anything else I can help with?

midget1500

hmmm not sure on that, thought that answering a question with a question might seem a bit cheeky/smart/etc...