Career Cube Blog

You have those interview questions you hate.

The ones you dread and stay awake at night worrying about.

The ones that every time they’re asked, you don’t have a good answer.

So what are you doing to get better about answering them?

For some of you, it’s Tell Me About Yourself, for others it’s What’s your greatest weakness? Others of you stumble over the salary question.

Whatever it is, it’s time to get tough on yourself and prepare an answer. Stop kidding yourself that although you stumbled over that one question you saved the rest of the interview. Chances are that somewhere in the back of your mind your confidence was rattled when they asked you that question, and you spent the rest of the time trying to figure out how you could have answered that better, or stressed out that you didn’t answer it well at all.

Why do you do this to yourself?

Now don’t get me wrong, I do the same thing. Procrastination and I are old friends. But when I think about how much better I feel when I conquer that monkey on my back, I have the strength to just get it done.

So today-right now-I want you to take 5 minutes to write down that dreaded interview question that’s been bugging you and then take time to brainstorm some confident, truthful, honest responses.

For many of you, the questions that stump you are when you have to describe a situation where you didn’t shine or do the right thing. The best conclusion to these types of sound bites is to admit what you did wrong, and what you would do differently next time so you won’t get into that situation again. Be confident, be assured, and show how you’ve grown. EVERYONE makes mistakes.

For others it’s the salary question. Get a number in your head that you need to live on, add $3K to that, and it becomes your bottom range. Or take your last job and add $3K to that, and it’s your bottom range. If an employer comes back to you lower than the range you gave them, you can accept the job without going on welfare. Make your upper range $8-$10K more than that, and call it a day. You can also do research on salary.com, but you need to know what you’re worth in order to present yourself as a professional.

I’m off to UCLA for 3 days this week. I’m looking forward to some time in the sun and presenting to a group of students through the American Management Association’s college program.

Popularity: 4% [?]