Page 153 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

You’Re hiRed! inteRview
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anSweRS setting up marketing systems didn’t fit their very reactive way of working. I
think I managed to add value in both roles in the relatively short time I was
there – I still have good relationships with those teams – but I did learn that a
larger marketing function suits my skills better.”
Chronology
Broader chronology questions aim to understand the choices you have made
in your life, your achievements, your interests and enthusiasms, and how/why
your experience has grown in the way it has. Interviewers will vary in terms of
how far back they want you to go, but it is not uncommon for them to begin
with your education, in order to understand how your interests and expertise
got started. In all these questions it is better to sound purposeful rather than
the victim of random circumstances. In fact, most of us have careers that have
‘accidental’ elements to them – we happened to meet someone or ‘a friend
suggested it’ – the trick is to sound as if we exerted positive choices at key
points.
More commonly, the interviewer will go through your jobs in chronological
order, asking some or all of these questions about each role:
n Why did you decide to take this job?
n What were your main responsibilities/accountabilities?
n Who were your key customers/interested parties?
n What were your most significant achievements?
n What budget were you responsible for?
n How many people were in your team?
n Why did you decide to leave?
Now this can start to sound like a cross-examination, but your responses
should be based on all the principles we have discussed so far:
n answer clearly and succinctly; avoid sounding vague about facts
n emphasise positives, not negatives; avoid ‘I only had three people in the
team’ or ‘the budget was much smaller than I would have liked’
n prepare; you should at the very least think through what you regard as key
achievements in the main roles you have had; phrase your answer using
CaR.