[quote]anonym wrote:
Topsy turvy that motherfucker.[/quote]
Leon is the best! Here he is pretending to be Larry’s Jewish friend “Danny Duberstein” suffering from Groot’s disease…
To the OP, I’m not exactly clear on the particulars of the interview you’re facing, but a lot of companies are asking behavioural-style questions now. They tend to give a better indication of competence, they test how you think on your feet and more importantly it’s very hard to bullshit them with a canned answer, if the interviewer is good.
An example of an old-style, obsolete question: “What is your greatest strength?”. It’s so easy to rehearse a canned answer to this…“my greatest strength is that I’m an luminescent beacon of synergy in the dark, cold night of mediocrity and negative thinking”.
Behavioural Style: TELL ME ABOUT A TIME WHEN ___________. (ie: you had to go above and beyond the call of duty to complete a task). Always answer these questions in STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result)
“Well, this fat woman became stuck in her bathtub after eating a ‘Vermonster’ sundae from Ben and Jerry’s (SITUATION). My fellow firemen gave the job of dislodging her to me (TASK). I doused her in WD40 to make her more slippery (ACTION), and as a result she flew out of her porcelain sarcophagus like a wild boar being shot out of a cannon (RESULT).”
Here, they’re testing to see if you can construct a logical answer and think on your feet. Your actual answer isn’t as important as HOW you answer. They can also see if you’re bullshitting here too by asking probing questions, sometimes called “peeling the onion”. “How many other firemen were there?”, “was it one of those old style bathtubs?”, “how did you feel when you were entrusted with this task?” etc.
Finally, if someone asks you the inevitable question “What is your greatest weakness?”, don’t give them a strength made to look like a weakness. A lot of interviewing books advise you to do this and I completely disagree with it. So many people answer this with “I’m a workaholic” or “I’m so committed to my job that I take on additional tasks”. Give them a genuine weakness (not too bad…if you like to kill hookers keep this on the down-low), but more importantly talk about the steps you’ve taken to improve it. “I’ve felt my organizational skills are good, but not great, so I’ve taken classes on time management, starting writing down daily and weekly goals, etc etc etc”.
Just my advice. I used to interview applicants at a pharmaceutical company so I know a decent amount about the process