Simple and honest answers to difficult interview questions for IT (and not only) people.
Note that I am not an HR person; I work in the IT industry, and my experience with interviews where on side of the candidate, but I believe…
Note that I am not an HR person; I work in the IT industry, and my experience with interviews where on side of the candidate, but I believe that after 10+ years of work experience and several job changes, I have a good understanding of what the interviewer means by his or her questions.
What is your greatest weakness?
All people have weaknesses, and it's not a bad thing unless you are not self-aware of your weaknesses and you don't do anything to improve, and this is the point of the question, for example:
“My greatest weakness is that I make many spelling mistakes due to dyslexia, and I use software such as Grammarly that helps me a lot.”
Tell me about a time you overcame an obstacle.
People value their job not only by doing their day-to-day tasks but also by how they deal with difficult situations, and this is the logic behind this question to see how you deal with difficulties. For example:
“While I was working as a system administrator in company X, we had a system failure which could breach the SLA of 30 minutes downtime; the very first thing I did was to inform my manager and open a bridge call with all needed engineers, examining the logs after the time that the problem started we isolated the problem to the application servers, then we figured out that the errors were related to the new configuration but triggered only under edgy circumstances, we did a rollback of the configuration and the system came up, since the system was stable, and we were not in danger of breaching the SLA we ensured that no other errors appear we created a report for the developers to create a more permanent fix”.
I am sure that all of you have been in such situations in the past; you need to give a good description where you can demonstrate the value you provided.
How do you handle stress?
Every average person has stress; the interviewer wants to see how well you handle stress; stress can be constructive if you turn the stress into positive action. For example:
“I felt stressed about how I would architect the new web servers on the production environment since it was the first time I would do this, I communicated this to my manager, and we had a short call where he provided me some similar solutions that another team had to make for another project, then I talked to some guys in this team and were super useful to provide some guidelines on how to design the architecture.”
Why are you leaving your current position?
You must be careful here! be honest about the things you don’t like anymore to the company you work for, but don’t get very personal, and don’t give details about co-workers. I leave a job when there is nothing new to learn, no career opportunities within the company, or I get bored with my tasks! there might be circumstances where there were problems with individual persons in the team. Still, I would say that I was not happy with the company culture anymore and answer questions that might come up, but never — never name someone negative in person.
Why do you want to work here?
Don’t say something like for the paycheck or a bigger salary etc.! this question is done to see if you did some research about the company. Did they take on any new exciting projects? That’s a great reason! Did you see people on LinkedIn staying in the company for a long time? That’s a good reason! Good opinions on Glassdoor? You get the point; research before the interview and say what positives you found!
Why should we hire you?
Don't say something like, “because I am the best.” If you don't have any work experience, focus on your academic performance, for example:
“I had excellent grades on courses x,y,z that were related to the job role, I also excelled on related course assignments, and I was an outstanding team player, and I believe that I will provide value to the company, and I will integrate very soon with your company since I am a quick learner.”
If you have work experience, focus more on your performance and what you did to bring value to the companies you worked for in the past. For example:
“Based on my X years of experience in the industry, I will quickly add value to the role, I am a quick learner and a good team player, and I have a proven record of experience on Y, Z, and W technologies/skills”.
Of course, I don’t recommend telling any lies about your academic performance or skills, but you got the point; find positive things about yourself that will give value to you and the potential company that will hire you!
Tell me about your most significant achievement.
In this question the interviewer wants to know you better as person, want to see how motivated you are, what do you value most in life, what skills you used and how to perform the achievement, what challenges you had to deal with, and how you fit with the company culture. For example:
“I always felt that I wanted to contribute to the community with my skills, so I created a charity group on Facebook where people can donate old computers for families that could not afford a new computer; this required me to schedule the arrival of the computer, fix them, install new OS and schedule the delivery of the computer”
This achievement demonstrates that you like to help others, you are self-motivated, you like computers, and you believe that they are a necessity that everyone should benefit from, plus you apply some of your skills.
Of course, I don’t recommend lying about an achievement, is very unethical, especially if you tend to impress the interviewer with how a good person you are! if you cannot find an achievement beneficial to the community, you can say a work achievement that you did in your free time or without someone asking you to do this and was beneficial for the company. of course, don't lie either.
How many pizzas were ordered last night in your city?
When an interviewer does such a question wants to see how good your reasoning skills are! it doesn’t matter if the answer is right; there is no 100% correct answer. for example:
“Athens has a population of 3.500.000 people, assuming that the majority of the people are not on a diet, there are 3.250.000 left, then since last night was Saturday and there was a football match between Olympiakos and Panathinaikos (The most popular football teams in Greece) I can assume that at least 1.625.000 saw the game (male population like soccer more than female) and ordered either Pizza or Souvlakia (a popular food of Greece), assume that Pizza is less popular than souvlakia 500.000 could be ordered a one Pizza or more and since Greeks eat a lot and many of them have kids and kids like Pizza I would multiply the 500.000 people with 2 (Two Pizza)”
Of course, you don't have any data to support your hypothesis, but everything above is a product of logical thought, and this wants your interviewer wants to see if you have.
What are your salary expectations?
To answer this question, you must do some research first!
- What is the maximum average salary of the industry in the region you stay? For example, the Salaries in Thessaloniki (the second biggest city in Greece) are not as high as the salaries in Athens (the city with the most people)
- Will you work remotely? If you will work remotely for a company in Athens but you stay in Thessaloniki, then you should consider the maximum average salary in Athens for this industry
- Will you work remotely? If you will work remotely for a company in the US but stay in Greece, you can assume a higher salary than in Greece but not as high as in the US; many companies prefer remote workers from other countries to lower the cost.
- As a rule of thumb, never leave a job for another for less money, especially if you are unsure if you will like the new job; if you leave the job, it will be even harder to get a satisfying salary.
You can answer the question like this:
“Based on the research I did, the maximum salary of such positions in the industry is X Euros; and based on my experience and what I believe I can offer, I am satisfied with this amount, but I understand that you don’t know me and you cannot be sure if I will be the perfect fit for the company, so I will be happy with a salary 15% lower than the maximum and discuss after one year a potential raise in salary”.
If you have made a good impression and they can give you a salary near the maximum average, you know that you are in a financially healthy company that can give good raises.
I hope you found this helpful article and make you less stressed about a future interview :)
