Nowadays employers want to make sure the right choice is done and for the purpose they tend to make much more difficult questions in interviews. Sometimes because they want to put the employer against the ropes sometimes simply because they need a more detailed overview of the candidate. So do not take neither things personal nor be worried about them. Just answer them quietly. But do not forget difficult questions are the most important and need to be prepared.

I would like to classify first difficult questions in interviews in two types, firstly you can find the personal questions (family status and personality difficult questions). Secondly you can find the relations in the company questions which include difficult times, complicated relations, and things that can (allegedly) spoil the interview. The second are much more difficult to answer and need preparation.

Let us start with the personal questions. A clear statement: your life is your life, never change it, modify it or avoid the questions. In these questions the only recommendation is try to explain with them your arguments to take the job. I mean having children, being man/woman, being immigrant, is part of our life, not a roadblock. Just sell it in a way that instead a roadblock is an advantage. Show emotion and interest for the company. But be careful because the commitments must be done. For example if you have two children and said your partner could pick it up if you are too busy, afterwards your boss will probably remember. (and we go to the most important point in interviews, never lie).

The controversial point is that we all have weak points, we live far from job, have a family, age, etc.. and it is not a problem to work. Just try to have an argumentation  interesting for the company. One thing is clear In my opinion personal questions are avoidable, but always in a reasonable way. therefore short and good answers help better than cutting the interviewer because that can be interpreted as if you hide something or have fear of being rejected for the job on it. And it is not the case!

Before the second type of interview questions, a small clause, remember that you must prepare all interviews and that includes possible questions in all ways. And if you do not prepare, learn from mistakes, I remember one of my worst interviews because I did not prepare it. I stayed the whole trip back home analysing the failures and learning what to answer. Never happened again.

So the type of questions we are talking about are: “3 points positive and negative of you at work, tell us a difficult situation with a colleague, tell us a moment of disagreement with one person in your team, what did you feel? tell us a project that went wrong, a failure, a conflict, a wrong decision, worst activities you had to do in your last company. I put the negative ones because are much more difficult to answer we all have examples in positive (but prepare them also).

The intentions of these questions are to understand your type of management / personality in difficult situations. Here never lie (afterall personality test show everything, remember), be open to failure but always go to the point you analyse what went wrong and what did you learn from it. We all find difficult projects, situation, conflictive colleagues, the question they want to know is how you react on it. And how you controlled the situation that you understand your behaviour and change it if necessary.

And remember always if they do not take you is that either you did not have the skills or knowledge or the company was not good for you. And if so, like Nemo said… Keep on swimming !!!