There are certain interview questions that invite jobseekers to get negative: Why did you leave this company (especially if your tenure was short or if you were laid off)? Tell me about a difficult boss/ client/ work situation. What are your weaknesses?
There are certain interview questions that invite jobseekers to get negative: Why did you leave this company (especially if your tenure was short or if you were laid off)? Tell me about a difficult boss/ client/ work situation. What are your weaknesses?
The above questions are negatively framed, and if you take the question literally you might get negative too. You might go into gory detail about how dysfunctional your last work environment was. Or you might take the difficult boss question as an invitation to vent. Or you might answer the weakness question by offering a laundry list of what you hope to improve about yourself. As a former recruiter, I often knew where my candidates had issues based on where their answers would linger. The guilty can’t help but confess, and when candidates would go on and on about something I took that as a sign to probe further.
Instead of emphasizing where you are uncomfortable, prepare truthful but concise responses to these tough job search questions and move forward quickly. Go back to your talking points that answer positive questions: what are your strengths, what are your biggest achievements, how are you a fit for this job. Negative questions look to the past but the job is in the here and now. Negative questions answered literally are disempowering because they focus on what went wrong. You must resist the temptation to expand on these negative questions and instead weight your interview towards positive answers.
Is Your Job Search Flexible or Just Unfocused?
As a recruiter, I’ve seen lack of flexibility on the recruiting side with employers clinging to every last detail in their ideal spec while perfectly good candidates get overlooked. As a career coach, I see jobseekers prematurely dismissing possible targets waiting for that perfect job. It’s true that you want to be focused in your job search (otherwise you dilute your efforts and come across as scattered and possibly desperate).
5 Questions to Test If Your Resume Is Recruiter-Proof
After recruiting in search and in-house for over ten years, I have read thousands of resumes. Due to sheer volume of resumes received and all the other things that vie for the recruiter’s attention in the hiring process – scheduling, interviewing, networking, reference checks, client debriefs, and more – the resume review process is ruthlessly quick.
Why Conventional Wisdom On Work Flexibility Is Always Wrong
In a previous post, I wrote about why employment statistics are always wrong. In a similar way, conventional wisdom on work flexibility is always wrong. It is impossible to generalize something that is inherently case-by-individual case. Therefore, any boilerplate advice or conventional wisdom is bound to omit a key consideration, underweight or overemphasize other considerations, or take too long-term or short-term of a view.
