The Internet is replete with advice on how to answer typical questions such as “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”, “What are your shortcomings?” and “Why are sewer manholes round?” However, much more often during real interviews other questions and requests are asked, from which it is also easy to get confused. For example: “Tell me about yourself”, “Describe the job that you consider ideal for yourself”, “What would you do if you had the opportunity not to work?” It's not clear how to answer correctly.
Let's start with the main thing: there are no right or wrong answers to such questions. It is in your best interest to answer honestly and not choose the answer you think you would like to hear. You are assessed in relation to a specific position, and not as a person in general, as a whole. It’s like with psychological tests: for different work functions and different conditions of interaction with colleagues, people of different psychotypes are needed. In some places, a person with a tough and authoritarian character will be out of place, but in others, on the contrary, this is exactly what is expected.
An interview is not an exam or an appointment with a psychologist, but a business meeting that has a specific purpose. Namely, to understand whether you are suitable for a specific position with all its features (and not all of them are listed in the vacancy), whether you will fit into a specific team and whether all this will suit you.
To find out, a recruiter or manager looking for an employee to join his team asks questions not only about professional skills and experience, but also more abstract and lengthy ones. This is necessary to assess your personality traits, motives and behavior patterns in different work situations.
Here are some popular questions.
"Tell us about yourself"
Such a simple request can stump even the most confident candidate. What should you talk about - about work or generally about yourself, family, hobbies? What to mention first? Why even ask such a general question?
It's simple: your answer will allow you to evaluate how you set priorities, how you evaluate your status and how sensitive you are to professional achievements. Also, this question immediately clearly shows whether a person knows how to speak in a structured and to the point, to highlight the main thing, or whether he gets lost and his thoughts scatter throughout the tree.
Anastasia Voropaeva , an expert at hh.ru “Ready Resume” and “Career Consultant” services, recommends talking about yourself as a specialist when answering. You shouldn’t start at school and tell your entire biography, no matter how fascinating it may be. Start your story about relevant career experience with a phrase like “I started my career as a financial analyst at company N in 2010...” and gradually work your way up to your current position.
If during your career path you changed direction - you recently mastered a new profession in which you are looking for a job, then it’s worth talking about your previous experience very briefly, but explaining what led you to the decision to change paths.
If you are looking for your first job in your specialty, tell us why you chose this profession and about your studies.
In any case, answering this question should take no more than 8-10 minutes, even if you have a very eventful career path (tell only about the main milestones). It’s worth thinking through and rehearsing your answer in advance - it’s actually often heard during interviews.
Enjoy and learn. What's first?
To become a person, you need to learn to enjoy achievements.
The entire human psyche is a mechanism for obtaining pleasure. We are able to derive pleasure from everything. The key is desire. Actually, the psyche is a set of desires containing properties for their implementation. The very ones that need to be developed. All human desires are divided into groups - vectors, each vector brings special interests and a way of perceiving reality.
For example, people with the skin vector perceive the world through the prism of benefit and advantage; for people with the anal vector, the world is divided into clean and dirty. For a person with a visual vector, the main thing in life is emotions and feelings, and sound people look for meaning in everything.
The desire for pleasure is an unstable quantity. It (desire) grows, as does the ability to receive this pleasure. And like any ability, it can and should be developed. We also learn to enjoy.
Pleasure. In small ways and in big ways
In our world there are two principles, two levels of receiving pleasure. Basic - childish, infantile - this is the satisfaction of desire at the expense of others, direct receipt without effort. At this level, desires are already different - according to the vector set, but they are not yet developed in volume.
Maximum pleasure—of the adult type—can be obtained only through the implementation of one’s knowledge, skills and abilities among other people. I don't just do things for myself. What I do is needed by people. This is already a return that is not limited by anything. At least give it to the whole world. The more valuable a person’s contribution to the lives of other people and the more of these people, the more fulfilled the person is, and therefore happy.
For example, a small leather worker saves for himself - he demands more and more, he does not like to share. He uses his natural ingenuity to trick his parents into giving him another gift. How many toys can you accumulate? Closet or home. The limit is closer than it seems. Saving and saving for oneself is an infantile behavior that also occurs in adults if the properties of the vector have not received proper development.
An adult, developed leather worker enjoys saving for others. Time, energy, any other resources. It gives him deep satisfaction that, for example, a car developed by him or produced by his company is used by thousands or millions of people. Or the bridge he designed relieved traffic jams in the whole city.
And so on in each of the eight vectors.
When we become who we are born to be and want to be, we experience true happiness.
“What job do you consider ideal for yourself?”
This question allows you to assess your expectations, values and priorities and relate them to the working conditions of the vacant position. Of course, there are no ideal conditions in reality. But by listening to you, the interviewer is trying to understand how critically this job differs from what constitutes your comfort zone.
You should not try to guess how to answer so that it matches the real conditions in this place as much as possible. Firstly, it is in your interests to honestly define your comfort zone, otherwise you may find yourself in an environment that is simply unacceptable for you, and within a couple of weeks you will be writing a letter of resignation. Secondly, no matter how hard you try to guess, you cannot know for sure the key features of this position. But your interlocutor knows them.
