Page 93 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

You’Re hiRed! inteRview anSweRS Recognising a ‘thought-based’
interview question

What are the key ingredients of a ‘thought-based’ question? What will alert you
that the interview is trying to explore aspects of your thinking and problem-
solving style? As a rule of thumb, the words below are likely (but not always), to
relate to thought leadership, and should therefore trigger your thinking about
aspects of your previous roles where you have had to problem-solve in some
capacity.

creative problem new strategy
develop identify come up with complex
plan opportunity analyse idea

Another way to recognise a ‘thought-based’ question is when it does not
obviously relate to delivering a task or to interacting with other people; this can
be quite hard to spot and sometimes it depends on where the emphasis is in
the question. So, for example:

‘tell me about a time where you worked with others to develop
a new concept’

is likely to be a ‘people’ question, rather than a ‘thought’ question.

Whereas:

‘tell me about a time when you developed a new concept’

is clearly a ‘thought’ question.

82