How to answer the most common job interview questions

This can be one of the trickier interview questions, especially if your resounding motivation is just to be able to pay the bills. Here you should remind yourself that although bill-paying is a high priority, passion and interest in your work is even more important. Even if that passion and interest comes from high-earning potential!

To answer this question, focus on why the job advertisement appealed to you personally. For instance, let your interviewer know if you’re interested in the work the company produces, the culture it offers or the progression the role promises. If, when you were researching the company, you found that a recent project the company was part of particularly interested you, it might be worth mentioning this to show you have taken an active interest in their work.

This is key, because it’s one of a few typical interview questions that gives you a chance to really sell yourself and all your relevant skills. Regardless of whether or not you have any professional experience in a similar role, you can still talk about the skills you picked up during your degree, an internship or part-time job. Try to relate these skills to the role you are interviewing for. For example, your part time job might have taught you how to work well in a team, as well as how to build strong professional relationships with your colleagues and clients.

If you’ve already been offered an interview, the chances are that the interviewer is aware of what experience you have and sees potential in you. Provide examples of times when you’ve utilized the skills they’re looking for in a different context. If you’re a new graduate, now’s the chance to highlight all the ‘transferable skills’ you gained during your degree, such as analytical ability, written and spoken communication skills and IT mastery, to name but a few.

This question is often a stumbling block for many new graduates, simply because they haven’t yet had the chance to develop confidence in their professional skills. This often leads to answers that are too modest or vague, meaning that graduate employers will have a hard time believing you have the skills and confidence to take on the graduate job on offer.

Your answer should address a strength that is relevant to the position, but this can be anything that makes you stand out, whether you gained this quality at work, while travelling or at university. Think of the role in question and provide an example of a strength that is relevant to the position, be that multitasking, organization skills or innovative thinking.

It’s important to tread the line between humble and overconfident – too humble and your strengths won’t be evident, too confident and you risk sounding arrogant. To avoid either, focus on the facts of your strengths, including specific examples of when you’ve had to use them and how you’ve developed them.

The scarier version of the previous question, “what is your biggest weakness?” is another of the most typical interview questions. Rather than seeing this question as an attempt to catch you out, see it as a chance to address the skills and attributes you’d most like to develop and improve in your future career. This is also the chance to address any holes in your CV, highlighting your motivation to fill in those gaps.

A good answer will outline a weakness in your skillset (e.g. technical ability) and then explain how you are working on this (e.g. by studying a MOOC in beginners’ programming or building a website). If you are honest about your weaknesses but show evidence of motivation to improve, graduate employers will see this as strength in character, proving you have integrity, self-awareness and ambition.

Although similar to the “biggest strength” question, graduate employers will often use this question in order to get you to provide more specific examples of your skills. The accomplishment can be anything, from a great student project to a personal feat of courage, but ensure that the skills shown in this accomplishment relate to the job role in question.

To answer this question well, you’ll talk about the accomplishment itself, what problems you had to overcome in order to succeed, what you enjoyed about the experience, and what results you achieved.

This is a behavioral interview question that enables interviewers to see how you react to problems that may arise. It’s a good idea to think up an answer for this one beforehand, so it doesn’t catch you off guard in the interview. 

The challenge in question can be anything from a difficult customer in a previous job, a problem in a group project at university or a particular module you struggled with.

A good way to explain this is using the STAR method; explain the situation (provide some context to the event), the task involved, the action you took to resolve this task, and what the result was.

The answer to this question is never “no”; you should always have something to ask at the end of a job interview. A few intelligent questions can help to show that you are serious about getting hired, as well as demonstrating your initiative.

Although it’s helpful to jot down a few queries before the interview, it’s likely that these may be addressed during the interview itself. If you do pre-prepare your questions, make sure to listen carefully during the interview so as not to ask a question that’s already been answered. If you find that at the end of the interview all your prepared questions have been answered, just mention to the interviewer that they’ve already covered everything you wanted to ask.

Other good questions to ask the interviewers are “what do you enjoy most about working for the company?”, “what training will be provided if I were to be offered the role?” and “what would be the expected progression route in this role?”

This article was originally published in November 2014. It was updated in September 2019. 

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