Be Prepared when Employers Use These Interview Techniques

Job interviews are not all created equally. While a standard interview sticks to a basic format, there are other interview situations you might find yourself in that are quite different. Employers often use interview techniques to find out how well you respond to stress, or to test your problem-solving skills. Being prepared for these interview techniques is essential—if they’re used, it’s for an important reason, and responding incorrectly will definitely count against you.

Situational/Behavioral Questions         

Situational or behavioral interviewing techniques test your problem-solving and analytical skills, and are used to determine how you would respond to a specific situation you might be presented with if the company employs you. In each case, an interviewer will present you with a problem and ask you to come up with a solution.

Situational questions ask you to solve a hypothetical problem, while behavioral questions ask you to discuss how you have dealt with a certain problem in the past. To prepare for such questions, review the steps you took to solve previous workplace problems of different kinds.

Stress Interview Techniques

In most cases you’ll encounter stress interviewing techniques only if the position you are applying for will involve stressful situations. This technique will deliberately put you in a stressful situation to test how you react—the interviewer may act rudely, ask several confrontational questions, or disagree with you constantly.

Handling these techniques successfully requires that you keep calm and avoid reacting in a defensive or angry way. Stress-inducing techniques can take you by surprise, but it’s worth mentioning that interviewers are usually people will good interpersonal skills, and will not act rudely without a specific reason. Don’t take the interviewer’s behavior personally—they only want to know that you’ll be able to keep your cool when faced with workplace stress.

Case Studies

Case interviews are selectively used in certain industries to test skills that are relevant in management consulting and other similar fields—problem-solving and analytical skills, creativity, interpersonal skills, insight and business acumen, and the ability to think in a stressful situation. In a typical case interview, you are presented with a case study, allowed to review it for several minutes, and then asked to give a short presentation on your findings.

An interviewer who presents you with a case study is interested in seeing not only the results of your examination of the case, but also how you arrive at those results. Case studies are usually incomplete—the interviewer also wants to see how well you can pinpoint essential missing information, and ask the right questions to get the answers.

Still Stuck?  Try using the "The Job Interview Secret"

Also, please review our Free Interview Tips section.  If you need more help, please consider using a Career Counselor.