I have been in the search industry for more than 30 years. I think the second person I ever interviewed taught me how to mangle this question and almost drove me out of the field by speaking continuously for more than ten minutes.
To understand how to answer question on an interview, you need to remember that you are not meeting a friend for lunch but being evaluated and assessed for how you fit into an organization.
Therefore to answer this and any other question on an interview, you need to target your answer on what they care about. That assumes that you know what they are looking for in the way of skills in order to target your answer.
Keep your answer to 30-45 seconds unless you are a skillful and interesting speaker in which you can extend your answer to one minute, all targeted toward confirming the basic information that caused you to get the interview.
DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT SPEAK FOREVER BECAUSE THEY WILL STOP LISTENING AFTER A WHILE.
For example, for a company that might be trying to fill a hedge fund accounting position, your answer might be something like.
“I’ve been in the accounting field for five years with the last three years in hedge fund accounting with responsibility for calculating the NAV for 5 hedge funds and __________ .
Remember: Keep your answer to 30-45 seconds because, in that amount of time, you will confirm the basic information that caused you to get the interview, give them an outline for following up that will allow you to anticipate their follow up questions and prepared to answer them. Plus you will keep the interview interactive, interesting and flowing.
The Big Game Hunter
www.TheBigGameHunter.us
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