Interview Questions

veritas_libertas

I did a little google dork searching on TE for these exact questions but didn't have any luck. I'm curious to hear how other TE members have dealt with these exact questions during interviews:

1. What are you leaving your current employer?

This one makes me uncomfortable. I tend be to loyal to whoever my employer is.

2. Why should we hire you?

Oh yeah. I'm awesome so you should hire me!

ITSpectre

Well for me I usually do contract roles so I always just say

1. Currently my contract is coming to a end and im looking to continue working for another employer after that contract is complete

Question 2 I usually answer like this

2. Why should we hire you?

Given my track record in Information Technology I would be an asset to this team building on my knowledge of IT processes, SLA completion, and troubleshooting skills. I am a team player looking for a opportunity to grow within your company and cotribute my knowledge for its betterment.

N7Valiant

veritas_libertas wrote: »

1. What are you leaving your current employer?

This one makes me uncomfortable. I tend be to loyal to whoever my employer is.

Isn't this a "why" question though? Why are you leaving your current employer?

Honesty might be the best answer, although if lack of compensation is the reason, perhaps it's best to see if you can shoehorn "lack of opportunities for advancement" in there instead.

2. Why should we hire you?

Oh yeah. I'm awesome so you should hire me!

I'm starting to see this question as synonymous with the "skills" segment of my resume, and an opportunity to list your accomplishments. Think carefully if you've ever contributed something above and beyond your peers. For example, if your coworker says he's not touching that registry, but your boss just told you to fix whatever is causing File Explorer to open up when you login to the OS, then that's what you do even if there's a risk.

Or if there's 5 of you (including your supervisor) taking turns trying to manually clear a massive paper jam out of an industrial paper shredder with hand tools, but only you thought to look for a reverse function to back out the jam, observed that only one of the gears were turning with no clicking sound to indicate the gear was stuck, then saw the broken gear piece at the bottom of the gearbox thus saving many man hours from trying to salvage something that was dead. That would demonstrate thinking outside the box if you resolved the issue well before anyone else by taking a different approach.

636-555-3226

1. What are you leaving your current employer?

Honesty wins points, but honesty with a slant. dont tell them any red flags, but feel free to spin the truth a bit. Stuck in a rut with nowhere to go and no new things to work on? Need more of a challenge? Got a new boss and everybody in the department is looking? etc etc

2. Why should we hire you?

Rephrase this question to help you answer it - why are you better than the other 50 resumes we looked at and 3 other people we interviewed? You don' t know who they are, but you can guess they're similar to you since they all got the same interview. Imagine your coworker who does mostly the same job is also applying and tell them why you're better than (s)he is. Only you can know that answer.

si20

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I did a little google dorking searching on TE for these exact questions but didn't have any luck. I'm curious to hear how other TE members have dealt with these exact questions during interviews:

1. What are you leaving your current employer?

This one makes me uncomfortable. I tend be to loyal to whoever my employer is.

2. Why should we hire you?

Oh yeah. I'm awesome so you should hire me!

Last time I went job hunting, I literally must have read 1,000 interview questions and I consider myself fairly good at answering them now. The key, regardless of what you say, is that you're appearing honest. It's relatively easy to see if someone is lying. So let's say you answer the first question with: "i've done everything there was to do in my previous role and need to progress" - you MIGHT convey that you leave whenever you feel you've done your duty - the interviewer will likely see a red flag.

Personally, I always give a truthful answer such as: "I was hired to work Mon-Fri, 9-5, but I have been doing 12 hour shifts for the last year. So i'd really like to get back to a normal shift pattern." etc etc Interviewers are human too and being honest will strike a chord.

As for the second question. "Why should you hire me?" - that is the interviewers' way of saying: "did you read the job spec and do you match it" - the chances are, you do fit the job spec, but you need to tell them why you match it.

N7Valiant

I don't believe people are as omniscient as you think they are.

My boss assumes I'm lying even if I'm telling the truth, despite having a little interesting conversation with me when I was trying to request a vacation in which he told me "so you ordered the tickets already" and I said "no I didn't" and he said "yes you did" for a couple times before I got the hint. My coworker also accused me of having a "Knight of Honor" complex.

I'd say you could probably get away with it so long as there's a grain of truth to it and you have a follow-up if they ask you to elaborate. Say if I left my job because my boss was constantly telling me to "move a litter faster" after I came back from nursing a broken leg, which left me with some hardware drilled into it, and I was getting tired of it. It would be better for me to say I primarily left because my boss wasn't willing to accommodate my request for less hours(just 32, and I'm officially part-time status ever since I started) and to stop putting me on graveyard shifts on the weekend because it wasn't meshing with my full-time college, which was also true.

NavyMooseCCNA

Answers in RED

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I did a little google dorking searching on TE for these exact questions but didn't have any luck. I'm curious to hear how other TE members have dealt with these exact questions during interviews:

1. What are you leaving your current employer? I recently changed jobs and in my case, it was for better health insurance. In this day and age, we don't owe loyalty to an employer. They have no loyalty to us. I will show loyalty to a good manager though.

This one makes me uncomfortable. I tend be to loyal to whoever my employer is.

2. Why should we hire you? I hate blowing my own horn; I struggle with this one as well.

Oh yeah. I'm awesome so you should hire me!

LordQarlyn

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I did a little google dorking searching on TE for these exact questions but didn't have any luck. I'm curious to hear how other TE members have dealt with these exact questions during interviews:

1. What are you leaving your current employer?

I just had this question the other day, I told them the position I am applying for is the next logical progression for my career path.

veritas_libertas wrote: »

2. Why should we hire you?

I like to mention what I bring to the job, how I plan to make a difference.

DigitalZeroOne

No kidding, I've done this, I'll start out with a joke for the first question. I'll say I'm leaving my employer because they are embezzling money, and I won't want to be under FBI investigation. Then, I'll give the usual answer of I'm looking for better opportunities, and more responsibilities.

As to why they should hire you, I always list projects I've done, technologies I know, and I'll say that I'm the guy that will stay up until 3am to fix something, and then turn around and wake back up at 7am to continue. I've had to do that, thankfully, there have been very few instances of it, maybe once or twice, but I am the guy that will do it.

I realize that some people are not comfortable with jokes at interviews, but I am, and when things need to get serious, I'm all business.