a) How do I introduce myself?
Most candidates when asked to introduce themselves merely end up reciting the points covered in their resume in sequence. This is not only a dull start to the interview but also a waste of a great opportunity to highlight and present your positive personality traits. This is an opportunity to lead your interview towards your comfort zone. Time well spent on introspection will help you draft an interesting answer. As already mentioned, the panelists are looking for traits like leadership skills, good communication skills and so forth. A candidate needs to highlight these traits by quoting actions and accomplishment forms his past. Hobbies and interests demonstrate how a candidate makes use of his/her leisure time. There is no good, bad or better hobby, but one must be passionate about one’s hobby.
If reading is your hobby, then you must be prepared for follow-up questions on your favorite author, favorite book then one must have an opinion on the style of writing of various authors and so forth. Being honest is the key her. Not having a hobby could be excused but lying during the interview will ensure that you do not make it to your business school of choice. The areas that could be covered while introducing oneself could be past achievements, hobbies and interests, extra-curricular, strengths and carrier goals. The answers with examples like “led a team of 15 people and raised sponsonsership of x Rs”, “as a president of our college debate society” and so forth.
b) What are my strengths?
Another important consequence of the introspection process is awareness of one’s strengths. In a personal interview, this question has the greatest chance of being answered with a clinched answer such as managerial skills, hard work, communication skills etc. remember that the evidence of self-awareness here, and in fact would prefer to form their own opinions about your strengths as well as those of his team and makes sure that the tasks that he takes on as well as delegates to his team members are suited to their areas of strengths. Similarly, the candidate is accepted to have analyzed various instances in his life that would include sports, talent in music, dance, drama or painting extra-curricular activities such as organizing events, participating in quizzes or even social work undertaken. The candidate must draw on key incidents to display the strengths that he professes to have. The more clichéd your strengths are, the more you would be accepted to justify them with suitable examples. As is always true, it is better if through self-introspection you can come up with a very personal and unique strength and can justify it well.
c) What are my weaknesses?
The answers to this question almost always evoke great amusement and disbelief amongst interview panels. Replies such as ‘I am sometimes too hard on myself’ or ‘The pursuit of perfection is my greatest weakness’ can leave the panel in splits and heavily influence the panel to consider your answers to be fabricated and not true to your personality. Remember, that a good leader always leverages his strengths but is more aware of his weaknesses he makes sure that he learns from past mistakes and does not repeat them.
Further, he makes sure that he makes up for his weaknesses by focusing on them and devising a strategy to nullify them. Similarly, the candidate is expected to be aware of his shortcomings and these must definitely be backed by incidents when they come to the fore. Having identified his weaknesses, he is then expected to have given thought to what steps he must take now to work on them and negate them. There is greater scope to stand out here and shoe depth of thought and self-reflection as part of your over personality. However, remember that in the eagerness to be hpnest and unique, one must not be too harsh on oneself the weakness must not be so great that it compromises your candidature!
d) How important are extra-curricular?
The extra-curricular activities that one pursues, whether as a hobby, as a part of an organization at work or at college, are the most dominant theme in an interview. At once, the interview moves into the candidate’s comfort zone since, as has already been mentioned above, if one is passionate about something it will be apparent in the interview by verbal as well as non-verbal cues such as body language and posture. It is also a critical area of evaluation for the interview panel as well since they are looking for evidence of leadership traits such as initiative, confidence pro-active approach, team-skills, perseverance and dedication to the task at hand.
The candidate must try to be relevant at all times try talking about events that happened as recently as possible and avoid activates that happened a long time ago. Further elaborate on key details and highlight your role and responsibilities adequately, but make sure that it is not too verbose. An ideal situation would be when the panel stops and asks you to elaborate about something in particular. While showcasing leadership traits, such pursuits also showcase a well-rounded personality. There are multiple instances of interviews where interests and pursuits shared by an interviewer and the interviewee have led to ‘l lowering of guard’ on both sides, making the interview very relaxed and comfortable.
e) How do I respond if I do not know the answer to a question?
There will be situations where one does not know the answer to a particular question. In case of specific question in the area of current affairs or academics, it is always advisable to be honest with the panel than to hazard an unnecessary guess that turns out to be incorrect. In fact, a frank admission of the same will actually work in the candidate’s favor. On more open ended questions such as asked to react to a certain moral dilemma, ask for more time to collect your thought. It is better to ask more questions to understand better and also to gain additional time to think. In the end, any opinion you form must be unbiased and based on sound reasoning, even if you are not sure about the facts.
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