201 KNOCKOUT ANSWERS TO TOUGH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

The Ultimate Guide to Handling the New Competency-Based Interview Style  

By Linda Matias

“How would you describe yourself?”  “Why would you be an asset to our company?”  If you’re preparing for a job interview, regardless of the job, don’t expect to be asked broad, open-ended questions like these.  Employers today aren’t interested in hearing job candidates talk about themselves in general terms.  With no time or money to waste on hiring incompetence, employers want answers that clearly demonstrate a prospective employee’s ability to handle specific on-the-job situations and challenges. 

“Competency-based interviews are quickly gaining popularity among hiring professionals as the most effective questioning strategy to identify and hire the right people,” notes career consultant, columnist, and author Linda Matias.  In her new book, 201 KNOCKOUT ANSWERS TO TOUGH INTERVI EW QUESTIONS: The Ultimate Guide to Handling the New Competency-Based Interview Style (AMACOM; November 10, 2009; $13.95 Paperback), she offers business managers and wide-ranging professionals a crucial interview prep course.  Letting job seekers in on the most frequently asked competency-based interview questions, Matias also reveals the keys to responding in a way that showcases a candidate’s most valuable strengths and successes.

As Matias stresses to all job candidates, the secret to acing any competency-based interview is to recognize and speak well of their accomplishments.  To come up with diverse examples to drawn on, she encourages candidates to dig into their past and to “think small.”  (“Interviewers do not expect you to provide extraordinary examples every time,” Matias assures.)  During the interview, however, she urges candidates to “think SOAR”:  first, set up the Situation or Obstacle they encountered; next, explain the Action they implemented; and finally, close with the Result.

Beyond offering helpful interview preparation tips and tactics, 201 KNOCKOUT ANSWERS TO TOUGH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS provides a bounty of sample questions—and winning

answers—focusing on the five core competencies most interviewers and employers are looking for:           

Individual Responsibility…marked by decisiveness, independence, flexibility, and career goals; assessed by a question like:  Summarize a time when you managed a high pressure situation.  

Managerial Skills…marked by leadership, employee motivation, delegation, and strategic planning; assessed by a question like:  Give an example of when your coaching efforts failed.   

Personal Motivation…marked by ambition and initiative; assessed by a question like:  Recall a life-altering event that impacted your career choices. 

Analytical Skills…marked by problem-solving and attention to detail; assessed by a question like:  Tell me about an occasion when your precision was important in your work.

People Skills…marked by teamwork, communication, and customer service; assessed by a question like:  Describe an experience when you worked with a culturally diverse population.   

Through interactive and fill-in-the-blank exercises, job candidates will evaluate their own career experience to confidently demonstrate these highly-sought after traits.  To add to their competitive interview advantages, job seekers will find: expert pointers on creating and leveraging a competency-based resume; insights into common competency-based interview mistakes to avoid, from being too modest to miscalculating or nervously monitoring the substantial investment of time; and seven ways to stand out during the interview, from writing a personal brand statement to projecting a commanding speaking voice. In today’s fiercely competitive, results-driven world of work, 201 KNOCKOUT ANSWERS TO TOUGH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS is an indispensable guide for anyone who’s striving to get hired, as well as for ambitious career changers and climbers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Linda Matias is the president of CareerStrides (www.careerstrides.com).  As a Certified Interview Coach  (CIC), Job & Career Transition Coach (JCTC), and Nationally Certified Resume Writer (NCRW), she specializes in assisting professionals in every aspect of career transition.  Her syndicated column and podcasts appear on CareerKnowHow.com, JobSeekersAdvice.com, the CareerStrides You Tube channel, and other web venues.  A former president of the National Resume Writers Association, she is also the author of How to Say It^® Job Interviews.  She lives in Long Island, New York.