The Only 5 Interview Questions You Need to Prepare for

The Only 5 Interview Questions You Need to Prepare for There is an awful lot of chitchat, jibber jabber and small talk going on in interviews. When you take a closer look at the exchanges, you can see that there are only a few questions the interviewer is really bothered about. The rest are simply there to create rapport and filling the gaps. The reason you will always struggle to prepare answers to every single question you are asked in an interview is that the interviewer themselves didn’t prepare them. They dont really care too much about all the answers you give either. What we do know is that an interviewer has one major objective to fulfill and that is to get the answers to the five basic questions. Based on the answers, he or she will then compare the answers to that of any other interviewer’s and they will then rule you in or out. Here is the list: 1) What brings you to this interview? This is where the interviewer wants to see how well you have researched this position, how committed you really are to the company and why you are looking for a new job in the first place. Make sure you read up on the job and can say exactly how it fits to your skills. Do your homework on the company so that you can explain why you are on their interview couch and not the competitor’s. Finally, you will inevitably have to explain what brought you to a job interview, prepare to outline your reason for changing jobs. 2) What value will you add to our company? The interviewer is hoping you might be the solution to their problems, so let’s tune in to WIIFM and crank up the volume. List your main skills and how these will be directly applicable if you get the job. Back your claims up with achievements from your previous jobs, preferably quantified ($x increase in sales, 30% savings on paper clips). Forget what you want to get out of the job you are interviewing for, this is all about what they will get from you. 3) Can you work well with the team? Here’s your chance to elaborate on how well you get on with people from all walks of life. Tell them how you have a strong opinion of your own, but always make compromises and move forward for the best interest of the team and the company. Throw in some examples where you went the extra mile for your team and indicate how you will do the same for the team you would join. RELATED:  How to Build a Strong  Team  Spirit 4) What is special about you? Let’s face it; every candidate that comes through the employer’s door will be praising themselves in their interview. This means that not only do you have to brag about yourself, but in order to be credible you will have to give specific examples from when you have achieved greatness in the past. Tell them about when you solved that huge issue for your company’s biggest client and saved the Christmas party for everyone. Whatever nice and tangible achievement makes you special, memorize it and get ready to deliver it when prompted. 5) What’s your salary and when can you start? If you get this question, you are probably doing well. These two points are classic buying signals. They indicate that the interviewer is actually calculating how much money they can make from you and when to begin doing so. The answer you want to give has to be low enough to make you competitive and high enough to avoid looking desperate. A good trick is to be sketchy and give them a salary range and say that you can’t really give a definite answer until you can compare the benefits to what you have already. Indicate that you will be flexible and that there will be a way to work out both the financials and start date, should you get to that stage. Finally, what is your experience of these five questions vs. small talk in interviews? Related: 9 Killer Questions Candidates Ought to Ask the Interviewer. Image: Shutterstock

Business Travel Tips Everyone Should Know

Business Travel Tips Everyone Should Know Business Trips. You either love them, or you loathe them. They can be tiring and exhilarating at the same time. For most of us, they are just a part of the job we have to get on with. But they can be far more fun than that. And they don’t need to be nearly as draining as you think. Check out our top five tips for business travel to help you make the most of every trip: Research Most business trips are taken to visit out of state or overseas offices. Sometimes we take them so we can visit a client or pitch for new business. You might put a lot of time and effort into researching the company you are about to visit. You might even check out a few of the local customs to ensure you are greeting them politely and providing the right appearance. Double check your Visa requirements and ensure your passport is valid. If you can take the time to find out more about the area around their office and your accommodation, you might be able to enjoy it a lot more after your meeting.   Find a cheap rental car  so you can drive out to more interesting places in the region. Perhaps it’s near to a vineyard, or close enough to enjoy an evening on the beach? Find A Gym Business travel can take its toll on your health. After all, you’re sat down in a confined space for hours while you’re flying. Stretching your legs and working up a sweat are both great ways to relieve tension and stress. Exercise helps us gather our thoughts and provides more focus. And what better way to burn off all that hospitality? Visit https://escortjourney.com/ and choose a girl! Always Have A Bag Packed It’s much easier to manage your travel if you have a complete bag packed and ready to go each time. That way there is no rush to get things ready. Pack a spare supply of any medication you take regularly. Buy a complete wash bag with all your favorite products. And don’t forget to invest in a good book to help while away the time in your hotel. Image courtesy of Flickr Book An Aisle Seat On the plane, it is more comfortable for you to work if you have an aisle seat. That way you can extend your legs as much as you need to. It certainly helps to balance the laptop on your knees! If you’re working on the flight, you won’t have much time to sit and stare out of the window anyway. Arrive The Night Before Rushing to a meeting can get you flustered, and it will show. Walk into a meeting refreshed after a good night of sleep and you will be better armed to deal with a client’s queries. Make good use of the hotel facilities like the spa or sauna to help you relax after your journey. And get a good meal in you, ready for a tough day at the overseas office. Business trips can be tough, but these tips can help make them more enjoyable. Who knows? The overseas office may even feel like your second home! Featured image courtesy of DMedina

How to ask smart questions

How to ask smart questions This post is sponsored by the American Cancer Society. After I realized that the most underrated skill is asking good questions, I realized that I am not very good at it. I dont ask for help enough because I dont know what question to ask. And also, I worry the question will be bad and then the person wont want to help me again. So I started forcing myself to ask for help. Like, I put myself on a schedule. And the result was not so much that I got good help (I did) but what I really got was good at asking questions. Because I thought so much about it. Here are things Ive been noticing about what makes a person good at asking questions: 1. Surround yourself with people who make you curious. The first time we had a bonfire at the farm I was dating the farmer and he was winning over my boys with tree climbing and hot-dog roasting. I was concerned about fire safety, but I knew it was hopeless when I realized that the number-one rule I learned about building fires â€" put them out before you go to bed â€" does not apply on the farm. He just lets it burn out itself. Heres something I like about the farmer. He asks questions. When we were dating, and I had a fireplace in my house, he said hed build a fire. But it turned out he had no idea how to make a small fire. You have to light kindling and then get the little sticks to catch, and then little logs, and the farmer lost interest after about three minutes. I think this is what draws us to each other, though: We learn stuff we didnt even know we needed to learn. Its so hard to learn when you dont know the right question to ask. Being around each other gives us the chance to learn stuff wed never seek to learn. Like building fires. It also gives us practice figuring out what question to ask. 2. Learn rules for asking questions. Each industry has rules. Each circle of friends has rules. I think a reason I love work so much is that its all about rules. And there is no industry more full of rules than the venture capital industry. It has to be because its a matching system between two wildly different types of people: crazy, rule-breaking risk-taking entrepreneurs, and risk-averse, by-the-book, right-out-of-Wharton venture capitalists. But the VCs are most valuable to startup founders when the founders are learning from the VCs. So theres a lot of rule teaching going on. One of my favorite recent examples of this is how to ask for time from a busy person. Mark Suster, who is a VC, warns that you should never ask a busy person to lunch, because its too big of a time commitment. He has great examples of terrible ways to ask for time and also good ways, like, grab a quick coffee which is not so clearly defined, but clearly short in duration. 3. Get your timing right. When my step-mom was in and out of the hospital getting chemotherapy, I learned a lot about how to deal with doctors. When it comes to cancer, once you pick a doctor, most people advise that you stay with that doctor. And then get to know the doctor well. Because ongoing quality of life depends, in part, on being able to ask good question of that doctor asking what is happening, how things are going, and what is likely to come next. These are difficult questions for most people because this is an area where the vocabulary is new, and everything feels like a biology test you need to study harder for. The best advice I got for asking questions was to not worry about asking too many questions, and instead focus on asking them in a good way for the doctorask in the morning, when doctors make their rounds. Leave questions at the nurses station, and then the doctor can pick up the question when they are starting their day. If you make it easier to answer your questions, you will get more attentive responses. 4. Your questions get better with more information. The best questions are ones that come after a bunch of questions. The first question is never the real question. I saw this in action with my sons. When we visited the Bahai Temple in Illinois. The first question was: Can we play tag? And they stepped on every step and jumped every railing and then asked if theres an area for kids. The next question was Do Bahai people celebrate Christmas or Chanukkah? By the end, my older son asked me, Do you think that the Bhai people would mind that were Jewish? I liked that I could see his questions getting sharper and sharper as he figured out what really matters to him about the visit to the temple. I thought to myself that I need to be the type of person who asks a series of questions rather than just one. I need to trust that questions are more interesting than answers, and people will not get annoyed as long as each question reflects a little more understanding on my part. 5. Be true to your passion. Asking good questions means risking that the answer is totally obvious. Thats the scary part of asking a question. Here are tips for asking good questions in life, and here are tips for asking good questions in interviews. But heres something Ive learned. If you ask a question about something you are passionate about and totally engaged in, the question will be good. Case in point: there are no stupid questions when you are asking a doctor about cancer treatment for a close relative. But there are a lot of stupid questions from people who use the act of asking a question as a substitute for passion and engagement. Other people cannot do the work for you to make you care. When you genuinely care about a topic and have done honest investigation in that vein, trust that your question will be engaging to other people. Passion is always interesting.

5 Common Mistakes Students Make When Job Hunting

5 Common Mistakes Students Make When Job Hunting Anyone whos taken a look at the current economic climate knows the job hunt is a far more serious hunt than it was in past decades. This means that many students who are entering the work force for the first time are going up against not just their peers, but against seasoned veterans for many of the same positions. Here are some of the most common mistakes students make when searching for a job, and how to avoid these pitfalls to become the master hunter and land the big one. Networking The first mistake many post-college job-seekers make is by not understanding the importance of networking. When a company has a position to fill, and a whole pile of resumes to sift through, employers are going to make the selection as easy on themselves as possible, usually starting their selection process with a referral. While networking wont always guarantee you the job, it will give you what most others would die for, a foot in the door. Good networking isnt about nepotism, its about forging connections, and any chance to build more connections should be taken advantage of. Myopic Searches The second mistake many new job-seekers make is having too restricted a view of their job targets. Many recent grads either target only a select handful of companies, or, as is often the case, they select a particular city they want to work in and only apply to jobs within that city. Job seekers should think of their first job post-college as one that provides similar opportunities as college: a chance to go anywhere, if only for a year or two, to build on their experience, education and create some lasting networking connections. Many jobs for new grads involve travel, which might seem daunting at first, but travel allows for more networking to occur across the country; and who knows, networking might just lead to a better job in a better city. The Resume Your resume might seem like an arbitrary piece of paper that wont matter as much once the interview comes around; and while that might be true for some companies, it is precisely that piece of paper that will dictate whether or not you move on to an interview. Organize your resume as concisely as possible and make sure you tailor each one specifically for the company youre applying to. Its not necessary to send a two-page resume filled with your high school retail jobs, college intramurals and course listing. Find the shortest ways to accurately represent who you are and what youve done. Your resume doesnt have to have all of the details, save those for the interview-  in fact, those lack of details, the intrigue, might be what gets you to the interview. The Cover Letter Your resume, once youve revised it, should be relatively easy to customize. The cover letter will likely be a little harder but is possibly the most important document youll submit. Do Your Research! Search through the companys website or find some recent articles about the company that you can include in your letter. The cover letter is a sales pitch. Youve got to sell yourself and your services; more importantly, youve got to sell yourself  to  the company by what you can do  for  the company. Try to eliminate me and I from your cover letter whenever possible, focusing instead on you. A good cover letter will lay out all the reasons why this company  has  to hire you. A Numbers Game Finally, job seeking is all about the numbers. The more applications and resumes you have out there the better your chances of getting the job. Dont just shotgun mass emails out there; find an acceptable number of applications to send out per day or per week, and then follow up with those companies after about two weeks. This will keep you constantly moving and not getting hung up on one particular job. Avoiding these mistakes will put your candidacy well above your peers, illuminating your professionalism, energy and drive: the top aspects every employer is looking for in their ideal hires.

Alison Johnson Resume Writing

Alison Johnson Resume WritingTo me, Alison Johnson is the most influential and important person I have met in my online internet marketing career. I'm not trying to brag or anything but she was able to help me become a very successful internet marketer within six months of joining up with her. Not many people are able to achieve this kind of success within such a short period of time. She's an inspirational woman to me.When I started working with Alison Johnson, I didn't really know what to expect. You see, I didn't really know what I was doing in the first place.First off, I had never had any kind of training or background in order to be a very effective internet marketer. And secondly, I didn't really have any kind of plan or direction to follow.But through my experience with Alison Johnson I soon realized that nothing about me was holding me back. All I had to do was listen to her teachings. Now, here's where the problem comes in.Advice doesn't come without a price. Alison was one of the first of her kind. In fact, she was one of the first to use pay per click (PPC) ads in order to make some money on the internet. That means that by using her advice she took a very expensive and risky route to try and make a full time income from home using her own website.In the end it worked out OK for Alison Johnson but the cost to her was really high. Why? Because at that point in time PPC advertising wasn't necessarily very profitable and she ended up spending a lot of money trying to figure out how to do it.So let me ask you this. If I asked you to invest $5000 into your business for your advice would you do it?Of course not. So why should you do it? Why not take a calculated risk, like Alison Johnson did and see what happens?