Acquiring Your Career In An Interview, What’s a Time You Disagreed With Your Manager?

Here is an interview question you can be well-prepared for and practice so you make a good impression for the interviewer. You have undoubtedly experienced a few of these times yourself and will continue to have this common interview question asked.

“Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager”

This question can be answered with 3 essential steps.

1) Think of the right story, or a few.

Come up with a few different scenarios that happened to you that show strong skills.  A good idea would be to, before the interview, research some of the skills needed for the position (Ex:strong communication skills or strong leadership skills) and think of a story to show you are competent in multiple skills the job requires.

Make sure they are flexible stories that show you posses many skills, especially the skills they value more.

Many times, “Tell me about a time when..” questions are going to need stories as responses and you don’t want to have no stories prepared! Would  YOU want to hire someone who doesn’t have past stories to share?

2) Make your story specific to their particular question.

Always tell the truth, don’t lie about your story.  But you have to highlight specific parts of your story for your interviewer. Always keep the position you are applying for in mind and think about the more useful skills for that job and put an emphasis on those skills in your story!

The interviewer could take your story differently than you intended it to come across. You may have tried to show how you attempted to get your point across to management, unsuccessfully, and you ended up being right. The interviewer could view that as you lacking the correct communications skills to get your point across in the first place. Be careful!

3) Confidence, strength, ending.

Be confident. The easiest way to be confident is to practice!!! Go through your answer a few times and have a general idea for what you want to convey to the interviewer.

After the story, if it feels comfortable, tie it back in with the company and the position you are applying for. This doesn’t just show how you demonstrated these skills in the past, but you can show how you plan to provide these in the future. This makes your answer stronger.

Have a clean end to your response. Don’t end with “And… yeah.”  This can take some work if you are on a roll, but it can be done!

Have a few stories ready, emphasize different/main skills in your story, and be confident with a good ending! Practice and you will do great, good luck!

Acquiring Your Career In An Interview, Do You Have Any Questions For Us?

It’s time to talk about the one interview question that is absolutely inevitable in every interview. You become the interviewer for a brief period of time and control where the conversation leads. The question is:

Do you have any questions for us?

First off, never ask them NOTHING! No questions makes it seem like you haven’t done your homework on the company and that you really aren’t interested or don’t know enough to be able to ask a good question.

Before your interview, do some research on the company. Go to their website! Roam around it, read different pages about their culture and environment. Use this knowledge to help structure interview questions for them. Come in with 3 general questions to fall back on if there are not more pressing questions to be asked.

If you don’t ask questions in the interview, you may regret it later. These are the 5 areas you should be focusing on.

1) The job you are applying for! Make sure you know the daily responsibilities of the job. One great question to ask is “What would you say is the most essential skill for this job?” because it shows a genuine interest. Another good question is “What does a typical day look like?” so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into.

2) Development. Will you be trained? What opportunities are there for training or professional development? You want to know how it (the training) will benefit you so in return you can benefit the company.

3) Be specific to the interviewer. Ask about their favorite part of the company or about any role changes related to their position. This shows you are interested in them.

4) The culture and team. Ask about the people you will be working with and about the work environment! Make sure it fits you and your unique personality.

5) Conclude your questions with a final question (only if they haven’t already specified it) about the next step.You don’t want to leave the interview without knowing who should be contacting who first (actually you should be the first to contact THEM, but lets save that for another blog entry).

Don’t be that interviewee that has no questions and also don’t talk their ear off after the interview.  Just be yourself and ask the questions that you really care about and want to know the answers to! After all, this is where you could be working for a large amount of time, possibly the rest of your life.

 

Acquiring Your Career In An Interview, What’s Your Biggest Weakness?

You have searched and applied.. searched and applied.. searched and applied..

But every time you have an interview, something goes wrong. Maybe you draw a blank and have a loss for words, or maybe you just weren’t prepared for that one interview question that could make or break your new potential career. Well, now you can prepare!

I will be discussing some of the more common interview questions and how to tackle them.

“What’s your biggest weakness?”

First off, the interviewer is not trying to deceive you. You want to show them how authentic you are as an individual. You can’t say that you don’t have any weaknesses and you can’t tell them something that will immediately send up a red flag, such as not working well with people. Make sure not to stray too far either way!

One way to tackle this question is to look at one of your weaknesses, for example, being too insistent.  Change it into a more friendly word, such as determined. Then explain! Show how you have changed and addressed this behavior. The employer wants to see someone who works on themselves and their skills to constantly improve.

Don’t spend too much time on the weakness! Explain the weakness, then spend the majority of the answer telling them how you have worked on it, then give an example. Examples are the best way to show them you can implement positive change in the workplace to become a stronger asset to the company. Be genuine!

A different way to answer this question is to show them you have relevant experience, even though it may not seem like you do. If you know they have hesitations about your lack of experience, show them you have the skills! Explain other experience you have and why that is relevant to the position. Don’t let the lack of experience be the elephant in the room..

So, be honest and show them you can change for the better. Explain your improvements and give examples!

Goodluck!

Should YOU work for Google?

You have heard of it, you use it everyday. It is more than likely the search engine you used to find this blog. Google.

Let’s start with the advantages of working for such a powerhouse company that everyone uses daily.

Comprehensive health care coverage helps keep you healthy and your family happy. They offer very convenient medical services with some locations offering on-site nurses and physicians. Health coverage nowadays can be a deal-breaker for a job.

Google offers travel insurance and emergency assistance, even on personal vacations! Now that’s a less common perk.

Having a baby soon? Don’t worry, they’ve got you covered. New parents get time off and some extra spending money to help welcome the new bundle of joy. It might just be time to think about having another baby..

Do you want to learn new things, but without the bill? Remember college? Your bank account definitely does. Well, Google will reimburse you for classes or degree programs that help you with what you do.

Maybe you need some legal advice and aren’t sure how much that daunting bill could be. Well, Googlers get legal advice at no cost and also get common legal services at a generous group discount. Not exactly necessary, but could be useful!

The list goes on and on, and it seems that they keep adding perks! They offer other standard items in addition to health insurance, such as retirement benefits.  But they love to stray from the norm and offer many (some might call crazy) additional benefits.  They want to make your life easier, and they really seem to care.

Now lets look at the disadvantages.

Well, besides the part where you actually have to get the job, not many detriments to this company.  There is a recurring theme of productivity though. They want to make their employees happy and give them what they want, and in return they will want to truly help the company thrive.

Inspiring? Yes, I think so. It’s too bad more companies don’t use Google’s framework and try to utilize their employees happiness to the organization’s advantage, at least to the extent Google does. If increased productivity occurs and both the employee and company are better off, something is being done correctly. Here is a great example about why YOU should work for Google. Click here