Would you like to feel confident and well prepared before any interview?
While every company is different and their interview processes unique, there are some common interview questions that you are likely to be asked in almost every company's interview.
There are also general tips and ways of preparing for these interview questions, which are our recommendations of how best to answer these questions. However, you should definitely personalize these sample responses according to your profile and personality.
Before getting into the details of showing you answers to the above questions, a few pieces of general advice:
Always be confident when appearing for interviews. An optimistic and positive attitude always helps.
It never helps to present a false picture of who you are or what your skills and experiences are.
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It essential to do your homework about the company and the specific role you are applying for, before going for any interview.
Go through their company website – you should at least know what the company does. Read about what are the core products or services the company offers.
If possible, go through their Vision, Mission or Values statements – if you use them in your answers, it helps you make a good impression.
Last but definitely not the least, read about the Job Description and the Requirements for the position that you are applying for thoroughly. Basically, find out what your potiential employer wants, and in the interview, show them how you are a good fit for their requirements.
Now, let's get into the details of answering the 10 common interview questions:
Below is a basic framework of answering this question:
And these are a few sample answers for this question:
| 1. Your full name and where you stay: | “My name is Rahul Desai, I stay at Andheri West” |
| 2. Your Educational Qualifications: | “I have completed my HSC from Maharashtra Board in 2016, with a score of 66%” |
| 3. Skills or Knowledge that you have: | “I have done a MS-CIT course and my typing speed is 20 words per minute” |
| 4. Experience that you have, if any: | “I have worked in a Call Centre for 10 months, where I used to do Sales and Marketing” |
Once you have presented your basic information, go into the details of how your skills, qualifications and experience are quite relevant for the requirements that the company has.
This question is an opportunity for you to present your best self. Prior to any interview, you should have a list mentally prepared of your greatest strengths.
You should have one or two specific examples for each strength, chosen from your most recent and most impressive achievements.
As a general guideline, some of the most desirable traits that all employers love to see in their employees are:
It's important to prepare well for this question and respond carefully. You don't want to cast any doubt on your ability to do the job.
However, you also don’t want to seem arrogant or dishonest by saying that you don’t have any weaknesses.A good way to this answer this question positively is:
This will help to demonstrate that not only are you humble enough to admit you have a weakness, but you also are motivated enough to keep improving yourself.
Remember at all times try to make your response sound as authentic and honest as possible. You will be able to do this only if you prepare and memorize your answer beforehand.
Never say anything negative about your previous industry, company, board, boss, staff, employees or customers. Be honest while answering this question but frame it in such a way that you don’t sound like you’re only blaming other people or yourself.
Instead have a positive approach to this question, some of the ways you can answer this question is:
For every position in your past experience prepare a brief reason on why you left the position.
If you did get fired from the previous position, don’t lie about it.
Instead, explain how you could understand why it happened, from the company’s point-of-view, and you have no bitter feelings about it. This presents an impression of great professionalism and maturity.
There are several strategies of answering this question. However, it is critical to identify what the company’s needs and expectations are from a potential hire. Only when you know what they want, can you effectively answer this question better than any other candidate.
Walk through each of the position’s requirements as you understand them, and follow each with a reason on why you meet that requirement so well. Wherever possible, include numbers and statistics of your past performance, data is always more convincing than just words.
For example:
Job requirement:
A person who can politely talk to customers and handle their issues
Possible Reason for hiring you:
" I think I am a very good fit for this role because I have worked as a Customer Service Executive for 2 years. Thanks to the training that I received along with my experience of handling over 120 customer grievances every week, I am confident that I will be able to understand your customers’ issues and get them resolved effectively. "
This question tests whether you’ve done any homework about the company or not. Like we have mentioned before, read about the company, their website, their services, their Vision, Mission and Values statements thoroughly before going for the interview.
Some of the reasons that you can mention are, How:
This is a question that is usually asked for candidates applying for senior positions, or positions of management.
A good way of answering this question is:
This is an easy question and the obvious answer you would want to give is Yes. But make your answer believable.
Think of a story or incident that you can provide as an example of times when you handled pressure well.
Memorize this answer so that you can use it whenever such a question is asked.
Candidates who are appearing for interview while having prior experience will commonly be asked this question. However before you answer it, what you should realize is the intent behind asking this question.
Your interviewer will not ask you this question just to hear about your story, but the intention usually is to find out:
Once you have realized these intentions, focus your answer to talk about these aspects only – Your expertise or skills, your responsibilities and your performance.
You will almost always join a team within the new company. So interviewers usually want to make sure that you are a good team player and will get along well with others. In general, teams where individuals put the interests of the team before themselves, tend to perform much better.
So the key to answering it effectively is by quoting an example that is recent and relevant.
Talk about how you faced a situation where you kept your own interests, or ego or opinions aside, and that helped the team to actually perform better as a whole.
These are some of the basic interview questions that are commonly asked by a lot of companies across industries. We hope this list of suggestions on how to answer them was helpful. Remember to stay confident, stay prepared and stay positive.
Once you feel equipped to appear for interviews, you can start looking for jobs on Just Jobs HR.
