Asif Osman, an employment consultant, recounts his recent experience as a job candidate for the first time in a long while and shares a set of interview questions (sourced from an article) that reveal a candidate's personality and emotional intelligence rather than technical skills. He reads and repeats several sample managerial and personal-fit questions—e.g., "Who inspires you and why?", "If you were starting a company tomorrow, what would be the top three values?", "If business priorities change, how would you help your team carry out shifted goals?", "Did you build lasting friendships at previous jobs?", "What skill or expertise are you still missing?", "Can you teach me something?", and "What are the top three factors you would attribute to your success?"—and advises viewers to consider these when preparing for interviews.
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Hello again. My name is Asif Osman, and as many of you who know me know, one of the things that I do is I do employment consultancy. And today I'd like to talk a little bit about an interesting experience that I had. And I recently went for a job interview. And, you know, it was a long time since I sat on the other side of the fence where I experienced what it was like to be a candidate for a job interview. Usually I'm on the other side where I'm interviewing either to assess a candidate on behalf of someone else or, you know, for a company that I might have worked in. And I'm sometimes disappointed at the lack of preparedness at some candidates. But this time I was caught off guard because this person who interviewed me was well prepared. And to cut a long story short, when I went home and I researched some of the questions this person asked me, I realized that it was well researched and some of those questions were available online. It was taken off an article about interviewing skills that was written a while ago, so I thought I'd share this with you. Now, I'm not going to share the answers that I said. Those are personal. And everybody could respond differently to those questions. But the questions really give an insight to the interviewer about the personality, or rather the emotional intelligence of the candidate sitting in front of them. You know, we're leaving aside all those technical questions, we're really getting into the personality of the individual with these questions. So let me read off some of these questions and you might want to either write them down or, you know, play back this video and listen to each question again. The first question was, who inspires you and why? Repeat the question. He said, who inspires you and why? The second question is, if you were starting a company tomorrow, what would be the top three values of that company? Repeat the question. If you were starting a company tomorrow, what would be its top three values? Another question was, if business priorities change, describe how you would help your team understand and carry out the shifted goals. Repeat. If business priorities change, describe how you would help your team understand and carry out the shifted goals. So obviously these questions are designed for managers, people who are meant to manage other people. So did you build lasting friendships while working at another job? So did you build relationships that lasted from the other jobs that you did? So what skill or expertise do you feel you're still missing? Very, very tricky question. Tells you a lot on how it's answered. What skill or expertise do you feel you're still missing? Can you teach me something? As if I've never heard or seen of it before can be anything, a skill, a trick or a puzzle or whatever. Can you teach me something? So again, it's a question that tells you a lot about the candidate's personality sitting in front of you. What are the top three factors you would attribute to your success? Unless you're prepared for some of these questions Stuff for you to answer so what are the top three factors you'd attribute to your success? Now, as you noticed at the these questions are not technical. They're not the typical questions that you receive from a lot of job interviewers. But these questions are designed to get to the personality. And sometimes if the wrong personality comes into the wrong job, job managers or interviewers know that can ruin everything. So they'd rather make the investment and understand the personality of the person before they make a hiring decision. So do think about these questions next time you are going for an interview, or even if you're not looking for a job and going for an interview. At the least this is of academic value to you. If you're one of those thinking people enjoy.
