7 Interview Questions To Boost Your Chance of Getting Hired

Research demonstrates that a job interview is either won or lost based on two essential qualities… 

1. Confidence

2. Enthusiasm

The challenge with both of them? They can easily become too concentrated and, in some cases, may cause you to miss out on the role: Confidence can easily become arrogance and (over) enthusiasm may be interpreted as desperation.

How can you incorporate both confidence and enthusiasm in your interview without going overboard? Easy.

Ask smart, savvy, and well-timed questions

One of the best ways to demonstrate these qualities without going overboard is to weave them throughout the interview by asking smart, savvy, and well-timed questions.

One of the most common pieces of positive post-interview feedback involves interviewers being impressed by the thoughtful questions posed by the interviewee. Conversely, when we receive feedback that the interviewee “did not have any questions for us,” it’s often a deal breaker.

Avoid generic interview questions

Common job interview questions (“How do you define success in this role?”) are no longer enough. To actively demonstrate both confidence and enthusiasm, you need to show you can see yourself doing the job and establish how you’ll thoughtfully approach it.

Asking astute, specific questions helps your interviewer see how you would tackle the role once it’s awarded to you.

Here are a few tips for creating questions to boost your chances of getting hired:

1. Ask your interviewer specific questions about their career path, how they ended up at the company and why they chose to sign on. (Hint: A quick pre-interview LinkedIn profile scan may be helpful.)
2. Ask whether your interviewer currently has any challenging or enjoyable projects in motion.
3. Study the company’s newsroom, press releases, and/or media coverage. Craft a question or two about something currently on their radar that few other interviewees would know about.
4. If the annual report is available online, look through it and create a few questions based on what you read.
5. Ask about the role’s mandate and contributions to bottom line (e.g. increasing revenue, decreasing expenses, improving efficiencies).
6. Rather than asking for your interviewer to describe the organizational culture, ask them to describe how their teams celebrate success and take corrective action when they have gone off course.
7. Review their social feeds, see what stories are being told, and cite a few of them when zeroing in on culture, brand, and values.

Write down all of your questions in a fresh, new notebook, bring it with you to the job interview, and get ready to reap the benefits!