Page 152 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

CV and chronology-based questions non-ComPetenCY-BaSed QueStionS

While less common than used to be the case, interviewers will sometimes want
to take you through your CV in some detail. This approach is often used by
head hunters as part of their screening; they don’t want to put you in front of
their client if there are gaps or inconsistencies in your experience.

The interviewer will be trying to understand two things as part of this process;
the first, as indicated above, is a straightforward accuracy check; the second is
to understand the roles you have had in more detail.

Cv checking

Before going for your interview, it obviously makes sense for you to
have recently read your own CV! You do not want to sound unsure or
uncertain about what you did and when. If there are any gaps or periods of
unemployment in your work history, you should not sound embarrassed or
defensive about them. Your best course is to show how you made positive use
of the time.

Ideally, the interviewer will want to see a steady progression in your roles and
responsibilities, but for most people careers are seldom so neat and linear.
We all make bad choices occasionally and don’t stay in a job for as long as
we expected. Again, avoid sounding defensive and instead emphasise the
positives that you took from any role, rather than sounding negative and full of
regret.

If your CV contains a number of relatively short appointments you may be
worried that the interviewer will see you as a ‘job hopper’ and take it as a sign
of a lack of commitment or tenacity. The answer, again, is to be as honest as
you can and to explain the situation and, most importantly, what you learned.
The interviewer will not be impressed if you seem to have made the same
mistake over and over again! Show that you have been thoughtful about what
went wrong, that you have learned from it and that your approach is now
different in some relevant way. For example:

“Yes, the two roles in marketing didn’t work out as I had hoped. I think my

mistake was to go for relatively small organisations where my experience of

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