Job Interview Success for Introverts by Bob McIntosh

Author:Bob McIntosh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Packt Publishing

Types of interviews

Let's talk about various types of interviews before getting into the categories of tough questions. Today's interviewers use a variety of interview styles to hire the most qualified candidates. We'll look at four of the most common types of interviews:

One-on-one

Group

Situational

Telephone

One-on-one

These are interviews where you meet with one person. You will most likely sit across from this person, but don't be surprised if the interviewer would like you to sit side-by-side with them. I recall being interviewed in this manner and feeling uncomfortable as the interviewer, my future boss, sat closer than most interviewers would. Nonetheless, these types of interviews give you the opportunity to size up the interviewer, determining whether they are open and friendly, most likely an extrovert, or serious and to-the-point, most likely an introvert. Knowing whether the interviewer is an introvert or extrovert may help you determine how long or short your answers should be. Most extroverts are open to longer answers and may follow up their questions with additional ones, whereas introverts usually prefer shorter answers from the candidate. Regardless, the proper length of your answers should not exceed two minutes.

One-on-one interviews tend to be those conducted by the hiring manager or the person with the final word. One word of advice is that you may be asked questions that are inappropriate or even illegal. Examples of these might be questions about your age, race, gender, marital status, possible disability, and nationality. If you receive questions like these, you can choose to refuse to answer them or answer them honestly, then following up your answer with a reason why your age, for example, is a benefit to the employer.

Choosing not to answer the question may be seen as confrontational. One might answer the age question with, "Well, I'm 50 years old. And I've been told that my production rate is higher than that of someone half my age. Additionally, I bring to this company more years of job-related experience, life experience, and a sense of responsibility and dependability."

It's been my experience that the hiring managers are the interviewers who tend to ask inappropriate, if not illegal, questions for two major reasons. The first is their lack of training in interviewing job candidates. They may not know that it's inappropriate to ask a candidate what their religion is, or how many children the person has, or if the candidate is on medication for a visible disability. The other reason is their disdain for interviewing. Most hiring managers will tell you they'd rather be doing something else than asking eight people the same questions during sessions that take up a good part of their week. They are wasting time, they feel, without realizing they have one major problem to solve—to hire the person that will make their job easier.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.