When it comes to the job hunt, the interview is often the point that trips people up. It’s important to note that the point of the resume is to get the interview; the point of the interview is to get the job. Therefore, while it’s extremely important to have a properly written resume that is targeted specifically to a job, it’s equally important to brush up on your interview skills and make sure it’s as targeted to the job as your resume is. While Behavioral questions get more notice from people (because they are often weird), the skills questions are going to make up the lion’s share of the interview and answering them appropriately will not only help you stand a better chance of getting the job, but it will also help your employer determine how best to utilize you in given position. So how can you best navigate this portion of the interview?
What is the Purpose of the Skills Questions?
It’s pretty simple: employers want to know if you can actually do what you say you can do. It’s all fine and well to say you are fluent in three languages and have mastered Sage Simply Accounting (for examples), but anyone can write something on a resume. The skills questions determine how much truth there is to your statements. The skills questions also help the interviewer decide if someone is a good fit, what modifications may need to be made to ensure a good fit, and also determine the validity of what you wrote in your resume.
From your point of view, the skills questions allows you to give real-world examples of when you used a given skill and cement your position as the best fit for a role. It’s an important part of the interview!
Assuming you did your research and know the job role and the company fairly well, these questions should be easy to answer. Just like making sure your resume is targeted with specific keywords and examples, you’re going to basically do the same thing in your interview, expanding with concrete examples and the occasional anecdote.
Employers also use these questions to figure out your strengths and weaknesses. While it’s obviously a goal to make sure you position yourself as the best person for the job, it’s still important to be realistic about your weaknesses and frame them as how they are managed rather than something to ignore. For example, if you are poor at math, you can frame how you use other tools; if time management is a weakness, you could talk about your use of alarms or planners.
Finally, these questions are used to help determine an overall culture fit between you and the company. For example, if the company is quite small and new, someone who values a rigid hierarchy and a lot of upward momentum may not be a good fit. That’s not to say that you are a bad person or anything, but you wouldn’t want to work somewhere that you’re not a good fit!
The interview is often the place where people talk about their soft or transferable skills as these things are harder to quantify on a resume. So what are the best skills to mention in an interview?
Most Important Transferable Skills
A lot of the skills based questions are going to be based around the transferable skills. The most important soft skills to mention in your interview are:
- Knowledge of the industry: You should know as much as possible about the business you are applying to, its competition, its goals, and its mission and vision. Then make sure you know how you would fit best into these things and what you bring to the table. This should be pretty basic for you as not knowing much about the company means your resume likely wasn’t very well targeted either.
- Communication skills: All companies, no matter what they do, value communication skills. These include verbal, non-verbal, and often written. Talk about your strongest communication skills, netting in any technology you know as well such as Word, email, or social networking.
- Problem Solving: Companies love people who can think creatively about problems and solutions, as well as being able to forecast potential problems and solutions. Problem solvers make for great leaders, consultants, and “behind the scenes” employees, helping to ensure things run smoothly.
- Adaptable: In today’s constantly changing world, especially around technology and communication, being able to pivot and adapt is critically important. A flexible mindset turns roadblocks into opportunities which is something everyone appreciates.
- Organized: Employees who are able to manage their time appropriately, prioritize their workload, and work efficiently are always welcome. Discuss how you keep your work organized, how you prioritize tasks, and how you mitigate any weaknesses.
- Positive: No one wants to work with a bunch of negative people. Discuss your positive attitude and how you have turned things like rejections into positive experiences.
- Leadership: Even if you have no interest in formal leadership, employers still like to know what sort of leadership qualities you have. And this doesn’t mean taking charge of a team; it could include mentoring, providing feedback, supporting colleagues who need help, and setting tasks and deadlines, even in a small way.
- IT skills: While IT skills used to be thought of as purely a ‘technical’ or hard skill, nowadays, they are so ubiquitous that they are almost becoming a transferable skill. In this case, we don’t mean the ability to fix computers or troubleshoot networks; basic IT skills covers things like fixing documents, working with basic social media tools, and being comfortable with doing very basic trouble shooting on your system like checking cables to ensure they are plugged in properly.
It’s easy enough to bring these (and other) transferable skills into your interview. Simply make sure you have some anecdotes or examples you can share as answers to interview questions. Many of these things braid into each other so one example may include time management and positivity (like successfully delivering something under a tight deadline while managing your stress properly).
Skills based interview questions make up the bulk of an interview so it’s important to be prepared for them. Make sure you can answer questions in a way that showcases your strengths, be ready to answer for your weaknesses and provide concrete example of when you used transferable skills. All of that will help you do much better in the interview and improve your chances of getting that job offer!
Good luck
