But suppose he asks how you feel about your current job. Obviously, it fails to utilize your prodigious talents and energy level. But don't slip. There's more good than bad; otherwise, the interviewer will expect you to be malcontent in his job, too. And in describing your current boss, there's probably a lot that's admirable, not just shortcomings; otherwise your interviewer envisions you talking negatively about him. Same with your reaction to the overall management of your current company. Some policies and approaches (which you will list) make lots of sense. However, certain key ones have serious disadvantages (obvious to any thinking person, including your interviewer).
Needless to say, you also see far more advantages relative to disadvantages when asked how the job you're interviewing for fits your talents and aspirations, and how you fit the job. Same, too, when it comes to balancing the opportunities in contrast to the obvious problems facing the industry and company you're being interviewed for. Same goes for the U.S. and its industrial and other institutions, and on and on.
You're no Pollyanna. You can see defects and problems, analyze them accurately, and conceive and execute realistic and creative strategies for dealing with them. However, you're absolutely not one of those "nattering nabobs of negativism" a tarnished Vice President of the United States famously warned us about several decades ago.
WRONG ANSWER: You'd live your life differently if you could.
This is the wrong answer to all those "if' questions. If you could be anyone other than yourself, who would you be? If you could go back and change an earlier career decision, what would you be doing today? Don't accept any offer to rewrite your personal history. You're basically a happy and highly functional person, who has high self-esteem and is busy producing and enjoying...not fretting and regretting.
Also bear this "wrong answer" in mind when faced with "if' questions about the future. If you can be anything you wish five years from now, it will be something that represents fine progress along the path you're on right now.
With respect to your current and past marriages, outstanding or difficult children, and other highly personal facets of your life, probably the less said the better...at least until you're sure that your values and circumstances clearly correspond to those of your interviewer. You can't possibly gain anything by being either ahead of, or behind, him on these points.
And of course if you're asked whether you "consider yourself successful," the answer is "Yes" and briefly why...not, "Well, sort of, and I'd have been more so, if it weren't for..."
WRONG ANSWERS: Illustrations of your greatest talents and achievements that:
- don't relate to the job you're interviewing for, and/or
- happened long ago.
Don't be confused. When asked for your "best" achievements, always give your latest ones. Only when specifically asked about early phases of your career will you trot out the corresponding long-ago achievements...thus demonstrating that you've always been an over-achiever. The greatest days of your career are now and in the future, not in the past.
A variation on this theme has to do with what you like most and least in your current job or the one under discussion. Your preferences will match the job you're interviewing for just as neatly as your talents do.
WRONG ANSWERS: You've failed to develop nonbusiness interests. AND You spend time on nonbusiness interests.
These wrong answers are bookends; they come as a matched pair. You're apt to be asked what your avocational interests are. Better have some ready to mention. Active sports are always good. Intellectual and artistic interests begin to look respectable when you get comfortably over $200,000 or $500,000...and they take on great luster when you get above $1 million. Charitable and "cause" interests also gain respectability and ultimately cache, as you soar into the corporate stratosphere.
However, until you're being considered for a position high enough to be corporately ornamental as well as useful, don't let on that your wide-ranging interests take any significant amount of time away from work. Chances are your potential boss wants you "hungrier" for performance bonuses than for intellectual and humanitarian nourishment.
By the way, there's a chance you may be asked what interesting books you've read lately. Anyone who asks won't worry about your time, since reading is usually done when and where you can't work. Don't bring up the subject. But do prepare. If you seldom read, you should pick up a critically praised /^business volume...perhaps a biography or a spy novel... from the current bestseller list. Comment knowledgeably. And if pressed further, mention a couple other books you'd like to read but haven't had time for. That's enough. You're joining a business, not a literary society.
WRONG ANSWER: Your aspirations for the future don't springboard from the job you're discussing.
"What-would-you-like-to-be-when-you-grow-up?" questions are just a variation of the "if' questions we discussed earlier. Make sure your stated objectives are consistent with getting the job you're interviewing for and pursuing it as wholeheartedly as the company could wish.
WRONG ANSWER: Anything but the frank truth about when and why you're leaving.
If you were FIRED, say so. Reference checking will surely reveal the fact, even if you still have an office and phone message service at your former company. Any attempt at cover-up will seem dishonest, unintelligent, and emotionally immature. Give a short, simple explanation, objectively avoiding bitterness and complaint. Show you can rise above temporary setbacks. Your forthrightness and maturity in comparison with most people, who fidget, fiddle, and fume, will come off favorably. More about this later.
WRONG ANSWER: The too-vague answer.
