Interview Tips

Let’s go through a couple of essential tips on acing your interview…

• Make sure you’re prepared to answer all the common job interview questions. Wherever you’re applying, you’ll likely be asked several of these questions.
• Think of the answers you’ll give for the situational interview questions (whichever ones apply to you). I.e. gap in your work experience, why were you fired, etc.
• Understand how to answer behavioral job interview questions. If you know how the STAR method works, this shouldn’t be difficult at all.
• Follow basic interview etiquette. Make eye-contact with the interviewer, but polite, and so on.

Sample Question 1: Give an example of how you have handled a challenge in the workplace before.

?What the interviewers want to know in this case is how well you handle conflict and difficulties.

So, the answer here should be pretty straightforward. You should describe a challenge you faced at work, and explain how you solved it.

• Sample Answer 1:

“During my last job as a Google Ads expert, one of the company clients had accidentally butchered their own ad account. I noticed this over the weekend and saw that they were basically wasting money on nothing.

I took the initiative and immediately got in touch with the client to let them know about the issue. Then, we set up an impromptu meeting on the same day, and fixed the account before any real damage could be done.”

• Sample Answer 2:

“During my last job, I was managing the creative and web dev team in charge of creating an online store for a client. Two days before deploying, we found a major bug that messed up the whole front-end user experience.

Now, we could have pushed the deadline a bit, but that would have messed up the relationship with the client. The project was already postponed once because of unforeseen circumstances, so this one was a do or die.

I assembled a task force consisting of web developers from my team, as well as some software engineers from another department. We focused 100% of our time on fixing the issue, and actually managed to launch on time at the end.”

?Sample Question 2: Do you prefer hard work, or smart work?

By definition, hard work is when you, well, work hard. It’s when you’re willing to put in a lot of work to get the job done.

Keep in mind, though, that by asking this question, the interviewer is looking to understand what your work ethic is like. Meaning, they’re looking for a healthy combination of both, not just one.

That is, they want you to be the candidate who not only thinks smartly but works hard as well.?

So, your answer here shouldn’t be one-sided...

• Sample Answer:

“I don’t particularly have a preference - I believe that both hard and smart work is important to get the best results.

Smart work, on one hand, lets you figure out the best and most efficient way to get things done.

Hard work, on the other hand, means that you’ll do the job right. Even if there’s no way to do it smart or efficiently, you’ll be willing to put in long hours of work to get it done.

I’m the type that does both.?