{"id":60270,"date":"2014-02-03T13:08:47","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T18:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=60270"},"modified":"2014-02-03T13:08:47","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T18:08:47","slug":"darn-those-tough-interview-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=60270","title":{"rendered":"Darn those Tough Interview Questions!"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Roselle Pendergast, Head Editor, INALJ Minnesota<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Darn those Tough Interview Questions!<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Roselle.Pendergast\"<\/a>We\u2019ve all had those questions asking us to describe a certain situation or experience and how we handled it.\u00a0 Time and again, we\u2019ve either sailed through it or froze up and stammered out our answer.<\/p>\n

Over the past few weeks, I\u2019ve been seeing a ton of sites online discussing this very topic.\u00a0 Such as this article titled How to Tackle Three of the Toughest Interview Questions<\/i><\/a> from Lifehacker<\/a> or this article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/a> by Matt Krumrie titled Ask Matt: How should I answer these interview questions?<\/i><\/a>\u00a0 Krumrie suggests to use the STAR method<\/a>: Situation (describe a real-life situation from a past college, work, volunteer or extracurricular activity where you applied the skill in question); Task (describe your task or goal in creating a response to the situation identified); Action (review in detail the action you took, applying the skill in question to address the situation); Result (report the result of your action, providing as much measurable detail as possible).<\/p>\n

First, we must ask ourselves, what\u2019s the purpose behind these tough questions?\u00a0 Lifehacker<\/a>, again, found a wonderful (huge) image that discusses the reasoning behind the most common interview questions, The Logic Behind 19 Common Interview Questions<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 In my opinion, understanding the reasoning behind the interview questions helps us know why the question is being asked and what we can do to answer it appropriately.<\/p>\n

After being bombarded by those questions, we often get asked one last question, \u201cDo you have any questions for us?\u201d\u00a0 Usually I\u2019m so wound up that I burst out with a standard answer, \u201cNo, I\u2019m good!\u201d \u00a0Lifehacker<\/a> has a way around that!\u00a0 The Interview Question That\u2019s Always Asked (and How to Nail It)<\/i><\/a> explains the reason behind the question and gives a nice list of questions you can ask the interviewer.\u00a0 I always end up having questions later after the interview because it didn\u2019t occur to me to ask them during the interview.\u00a0 A good way to counteract that is two things, write your questions down before going in for the interview and ask for a business card to contact the interviewer if you have any more questions afterwards.<\/p>\n

The main thing we can do when preparing to enter a job interview is to ask ourselves those tough questions and prepare our answers so we\u2019re not caught off guard by unexpected questions.\u00a0 Plus, the preparation gives us a chance to make our answers as detailed as possible while being clear and precise.\u00a0 It gives us a better chance of obtaining either the position or another interview later down the road.<\/p>\n

Preparation, preparation and more preparation!\u00a0 It does go a long way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Roselle Pendergast, Head Editor, INALJ Minnesota Darn those Tough Interview Questions! We\u2019ve all had those questions asking us to describe a certain situation or experience and how we handled it.\u00a0 Time and again, we\u2019ve either sailed through it or froze up and stammered out our answer. Over the past few weeks, I\u2019ve been seeing…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,3643,217,5605,5890],"class_list":["post-60270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-inalj-minnesota","tag-interview-questions","tag-roselle-pendergast","tag-tough"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Roselle.Pendergast.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-fG6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}