Practicing for a job interview with the most common interview questions is a good chance to reflect on why you want the job, how it could meet your overall goals, and how good of a fit it could be for you. Often times, job interviews are given from the perspective of the company: How would you be a good fit for us? In reality, no matter your work experience, education, or history (or even lack thereof), you have a lot to offer in terms of labor, skills, and ideas. Job interview rehearsal is a really good time to pause and realize this is your career and to flip the narrative. The number one question asked helps cover those bases.

    What do you want to do? Why do you want to do it? What are you hoping to get out of this? What do you think you bring to the table for this position and company? How would you want to be in this company?

    Answering job interviews questions first, and thoroughly, to yourself helps form a clearer idea of your goals and to form a plan of action.

 Tell me about yourself?

This is the most common interview question and typically the hardest. It's vague and opens the doors to a medley of chances to communicate your abilities to the interviewers.

How to answer the question:

This is not the time to go into a life story of any sort. What the interviewers are asking are: If we hire you, who are we hiring? 

    -What kind of employee would be entering:

    Are we getting an early career, inexperienced but willing to learn type of employee? Are you a high        school graduate looking for experience? Are you someone drastically changing careers from                   something like racecar driving to Dental assistant? We're you a stay-at-home parent the last fifteen          years and are you looking to reenter the workplace? Are you applying here, because it's the next step      in your career?

    The best way to answer this aspect is to describe where you are at so they can 'meet you where you        are'.

    Ex. I'm a recent college graduate looking to get an entry position into my field of study.

    -What are you looking for? What are you trying to do?

    Here, you can elaborate on the direction you're looking to go in.

     Ex. I'm looking for a long-term secretarial position. I'm interested in business administration and             management and am looking for a position that I could settle into for the foreseeable future.                 Organization and personal management are strong skills of mine, and I think I can use them best         in a secretarial position.

    Ex. I'm looking for a position as a retail sales representative. I have experience in retail sales already         and am looking to move further up into management. I would like to in the next couple of years             move into a store management position.

    Ex. I'm looking for a job as a substitute teacher. I've been in education for four years now. I used to             teach kindergarten and first grade. My spouse is now in the military, and their job requires us to             move every two to three years. Due to this, I'd like to apply my education skills in a support form.

    -What surface level personality do you have?

    Interviewers have a team's dynamic in the back of their mind. For example, if the workplace is an open office with constant team work, a solitary, quiet person who does better working by themselves. It's important to note that this shouldn't affect your answer. Who and how you are should only be used as a mental heads up, in case you are hired, on finding the best approach to help you integrate into the team. No matter the case, all personalities and personality traits have benefits to being added to a team. In the same case given, having a more solitary worker will bring balance to a strong team dynamic.

This is a good place to list your outward and inward personality traits that will show through most plainly at work.

Ex. I'm a bubbly, talkative, social person who like to have focus and positivity to get the job done fast.

Ex. I tend to approach work by learning as much as I can on my own before executing the actual work and communicating with others or asking questions.

Ex. typically do any research, planning, and preparing on my own. I like to do deep dive background checks into what I'm doing and what the best way to do it is. Then, I'll bring it to the team, or whoever in the job it might apply to. I run it by them for feedback, implement it, and bring management up to date. I like things orderly and to a 'T'. Quality and consistency are important to me.

    This communicates being detail oriented and strategic. They now have a better idea of this person's personality traits and work style.