Kimberly was preparing for the interview. She just moved to town and was earnest in her job search. The headhunter gave her some questions to help prepare responses in advance.
What sets you apart from the other candidates applying for this position?
“Kimberly, the problem with this question is that the interviewer has no idea how this will help make a proper hiring decision. He could be playing amateur psychologist, to see how you view your self esteem issues, perhaps he could detect an arrogant attitude. I don’t know what information he would be looking for with this question. It is likely the interviewer doesn’t know either.
“So what do I do?” asked Kimberly.
“I would rephrase the question, change it to a better question that will give the interviewer tangible information on which to make a good hiring decision. It might sound like this.
I can’t answer that question because I don’t know the other candidates or their accomplishments. But I can tell you what I have done related to the core skills outlined in the job description. One primary responsibility, you said, is to handle change orders through your system. At the ABC Company, we had a problem with change orders, so I created a short checklist of the major problems created by change orders. There were only eight things on the list, but by watching those critical items, we reduced unscheduled shutdown from seven hours per week to 28 minutes per week. Would you like to see the list?
“Always try to move the interviewer back to specific things you have done in the past related to the most important core skills. Stay away from opinion and hypothetical responses. Your opinion might be different than the interviewer. And I will guarantee your hypothetical solution will be different than what the interviewer was thinking. Either way, you lose. Describe your real past experience. The interviewer can’t argue with that.” -TF