1.”Can you tell me something about yourself?”
When an interviewer asks you this, they don’t want to know about the kind of movies you watch, family issues or your favorite color. This is your prompt to give a general view of your background and experience relative to the position you are seeking. Focus on some accomplishments that you feel really proud of and how you think those have equipped you for the job you’re interviewing for.

2.“What would you say is your greatest weakness?”
Take a moment to breathe before you answer this and don’t blurt out anything that could jeopardize your chance and eliminate you from the race. Make sure that you avoid drawing attention to a weakness that is in direct contradiction to one of the decisive qualities that the hiring manager is looking for. And don’t even think of saying the hackneyed “I’m a perfectionist.” line. The best approach to this is total honesty; mention a real weakness but not something that will affect your ability to do the job. You can skirt around this by mentioning a skill that you’ve just started to learn and want to pursue.

3.“What was it that you least like about your previous (or present) job?”
Don’t look at this as your chance to vent your gripes or dwell on the negative. Rather, put a stress on the positive even if there were things and incidents that you weren’t so happy about.

4.“Where do you see yourself five years from now?”
This question is kind of loaded. It’s a subtle way of asking: “Could you be counted on to stick around for the long haul?”
Since nobody knows precisely what awaits them in five years, the best reply for this is something that conveys your hope to be settled in and get well-established enough to contribute to the company’s success.

5.“Please cite an instance when you failed.”
The interviewer’s interest in asking this question is to see how you took responsibility for the failure, what lessons you learned from it, and how you would avoid a similar failure to ever happen again. So just deliver the answer accordingly and in a straightforward manner. Everybody has their share of failure at one point or another, so don’t act like you’ve never heard the word before or pretend that you’ve never messed up.

Tags: answer questions, Employres, hiring manager, interviews, Job Search, Resume, stress

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