This is your first job, you say? Or your sixth job? Whether it is your first job or your sixth job, you will need to be interviewed by the prospective employer. Many employers use at least six of the same questions with each interview. If you have already been in the position to respond to those six questions, than why have you not started a job? Are you still waiting for job offers? No doubt you may not have prepared in advance for these six questions. Your attitude may not have been most desirable during your last interview process. Your answers too padded or too cocky, perhaps?

With each job interview you will need to treat these interviews as separate events; they are not the same. If for nothing else, the potential employer is not the same. The only thing that remains the same is YOU and if you don’t change with each job interview the next constant thing is continued job searches.

The six and probably the most well used questions at each interview are…

1. Tell me about yourself. (The employer wants to know you as a person.)
2. Why do you want to work for our organization? (Have you done your homework on this particular company and what they stand for?)
3. What can you do for our organization? (In other words, can you make money for us?)
4. Why should we hire you and not someone else? (Are you a go-getter?)
5. What are your main strengths and weaknesses? (Minimize a weakness and zero in on your strengths that will be beneficial to the company.)
6. Describe your personality for us please. (Did you say you were a ‘workaholic’?

Questions may be worded differently. Sit down and prepare yourself. If you are heading for six job interviews, prepare your answers to cover six very different employment positions. There is no getting around it. “One shoe size does not fit all.” Your employer wants to know that he hired the right person. He wants to make sure that person makes him, the employer, look good on a daily basis. He also wants to know if he has hired someone who understands the business and all that goes into it to make it successful. Your skills and your personality will need to blend in with not only what he wants but with all the other employees. No room for a rogue in that company.

Anyone wanting a job knows that it is a hard sale selling oneself but it can be done. Remember, whatever it is you say you can do, make sure you can indeed do it. There is such a thing as “overselling” oneself. That puts you in a position of “fudging”. Interview questions can be answered but only with the right preparation.