How Not To Answer The Interview Question – Why Are You Looking For A Job Change? by Vaibhav Gupta • October 17, 2013

The most common answer to this interview question ‘Why are you looking for a job change?’ is,

“I am not really looking for a job change as I am happy with my current job. However, one of my friends told me about this job, and I thought about exploring it in case, it offers something better.”

To start with, let’s accept the fact that a happy employee never quits, and a recruiter is not a fool to believe this statement. Every employee changes job for a reason. The reason can range from a variety of issues – issues pertaining to salary; supervisor; colleagues; management; company policies; market performance; branding; and many more that are, sometimes, personal and circumstantial.

Most candidates think that if they tell the correct reason, they could get rejected; hence resort to lying. However, lies don’t help. The recruiters are trained to catch, and weed such candidates out of the selection process. Most people are perplexed as to why such a question is asked, because they don’t understand the perspective that a recruiter wishes to gain by the answer to this question. Recruiters aim to hire employees, motivated by goals that are

logical, long term, and mutually fulfilling. They also wish to understand the psychology and environment within which the employee must have been working. Environment and psychology have lately attracted a lot of attention with in job market as people have savored the consequences of not paying heed to them.

Unfortunately, most of the candidates look for a job change for all the wrong reasons. Listed below are all those wrong reasons, along with the explanation as to why they are considered wrong.

For better Salary

The biggest reason behind changing the job is dissatisfaction from the current salary. Quoting Salary as the sole reason for changing the job is never considered healthy. This shows that the candidate is not concerned with the job profile, and is greedy for only the short term desires. Such candidates reflect the tendency to hop, every time a better offer is thrown at them. Stability is a big issue with them. Most people are dissatisfied with respect to salary not because of their own lower salaries, but for the higher salaries of other people that they know of. It’s the comparison, which creates the problems. No recruiter would consider salary as a valid reason if a candidate’s salary is at par with the market standards, with respect to the industry, profile, and designation, the person is currently associated with. However, if in your case salary really is an issue, then you must frame your answers in way given below: “I am extremely satisfied with my role, and the company. Working with this organization has been a great learning experience. As evident from my resume, I am a very stable person, and for me, profile and the learning hold a great importance. However, given the market standards, my current

salary is much lesser, and it has caused a little dissatisfaction. I have spoken with my company HR about this issue, and I am sure that they must have tried hard, but unfortunately, despite my consistent good performance and repeated reminders, they have not considered the possibility of giving me a raise. I am sure that they must have had their own valid reasons. However, I believe that I am ready for a salary raise. I applied with your organization, because the working environment and the learning process is the same in this company as well, along with the possibility of getting a better compensation, which would be as per the market norms.” In this answer, you have actually addressed to a host of issues. You told the recruiter positive things about your current role and company, your expectations related to salary, your awareness and research about current market standards, and a valid reason for applying to this company. You have also justified your demand through research, while not demeaning the importance of long term goals, profile, and learning. This will definitely be considered.

Because you don’t get along with your manager or team

Another major reason to look for a change is, when an employee doesn’t get along well with the manager or the team members. Now, as a rule, an interviewee can’t gripe about the current company, manager or the team members, because that would make recruiter suspicious about the candidate’s own behavior, and ability to gel with people around. Even if you are the only right person in the entire company, a recruiter can’t promise you a

favorable environment in the new organization, and I believe neither can candidate himself. It also negatively highlights the people handling skills of the employee. An ideal advice to such a candidate should be to go back, and stop applying. Sit back, and think; analyze the situation. Realign the focus from “Who’s wrong?” to “What’s wrong?” If there is a problem with the manager, fix up a one-to-one meeting. Take feedback, and understand the expectations. Sometimes, rather most of the times, no one is culprit, except the differences in perspectives and expectations. Make the notes or the minutes of the meeting, and assure your manager that you would work on the shortcomings. Once both of you will be on the same page, I am sure that you won’t have to look for another job.

Let’s talk about the differences with team members. I understand that the problem is bigger, because the biggest hindrance is your ego. The first and the most difficult task, is to put your ego aside. Once it is done, go and speak to them, but only in separate meetings. Try, and explore if everyone thinks alike about you. Find out the reasons, but don’t talk about the issues that you face because of them. The key is to change your own behavior, reasonably of course, and starting a spiral of behavior change in the rest for you. As an interview coach and a soft skills trainer, I have mostly observed that team issues vanish very soon if there is leadership support. Leader must always be kept in loop while doing all this so that he or she knows, and recognizes your steps and efforts. At the end of the day, the leader will garner the credits for entire team’s coordination and performance. Ideas proposed above, were for people, who have a long term career approach, and wish to make things better through right channels. For others,

however, the best way is to keep lying until someone believes you.

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When your current company is not performing well

Times are turbulent, and any company may face such a situation, any day. People, especially the recruiters, are aware about every company’s performance within their industries. A highly foolish thing that most candidates do is to keep avoiding the truth. I have even faced candidates, who insisted that their companies were performing greatly, and they were changing only because of the better opportunities. Such candidates never make it through, because from the recruiter’s perspective, either they are lying or

living in oblivion.

There are candidates, who openly criticize the company policies, and management decisions. Now, they might be technically right, but an employee is not supposed to be judgmental. What happened with one company may become the fate of another. Judgmental employees spend most of the time in analyzing things beyond their scope, and view every management process and decision with suspicion. Suspicions cause arguments, debates, and battles, and no one wants any of that.

A recruiter expects the candidate to first accept the situation at hand, while maintaining a non-judgmental attitude. The ideal way of handling this is by saying, “As you know that the company, I am currently working with, is facing a turbulent time, and the employees have got a clear indication from the management; hence, I am looking for a job change in order to secure my future.” But don’t think that this matter would end like this. The trail of questions would be more difficult, however, can be made easier by rational thinking and preparation. Candidates should be prepared for questions like,

“Where do you think your company’s decisions went wrong, because of which such a situation came up?”

“Do you think you could have done things differently, if you were the CEO? What were those things?”

“What if, God forbids, something like this happens to this company tomorrow? Would you leave us too?”

I will surely tell you how to answer the above questions, but some other day.

For an onsite opportunity (in case of IT companies)

There are two phases of IT recruitment – a desperate one and a non-desperate one. These times are largely governed by the requirements of particular skill sets, and the number of such requirements. During desperate times, IT companies do compromise on this term, in order to fulfill their project requirements. Candidates even have the courage to negotiate on the basis of onsite opportunity with some companies. However, during the other times, when no such desperation exists, such candidates are rejected outright. The simple reason being that if the company you are working with, doesn’t think of you as a deserving candidate to be deployed onsite, how can they? It simply implies that for you, role, responsibilities, project quality, learning and development or any such organizational virtues weigh lesser than a simple onsite opportunity, which is more of a short-term wealth accumulation mechanism. The verdict is simple – ‘you don’t understand business’. While some may disagree, I have never shown a green signal to any such candidate. Change is a highly welcomed phenomenon, but only for the right reasons.

For an opportunity to work with a better brand

This answer is like a swamp; once you jump into it, you slide down with no comeback. Harder you try to come out of it, deeper you sink. The recruiter of a bigger company knows that he represents a bigger brand for which, there are valid reasons. However, he would be keen to know your definition and parameters of big brand. The term ‘bigger brand’ has different meanings for different people. For most, it is fatter pay packages. Some other shallow perceptions include larger teams, big market presence or share, swanky offices, and happening crowd. However, interviewer is searching for a person, who identifies and values true reasons like, well defined processes and systems, opportunity to work in cross functional teams, strong training and development platform, multifaceted learning opportunities, a bigger platform to showcase the performance, to gain enormous recognition, and finally, to achieve a comprehensive development as a professional human being. I hope you must have checked by now what factors you had included in the definition of ‘bigger brand’. Remember one thing, though. No matter how strongly you establish the new company as a bigger and better brand, never ever demean your current organization.

Always start your answer with praises for your current company, and the way it helped in your evolution as a professional. Being ungrateful is never appreciated. I once encountered an aspirant,

who devoted 10 minutes to disgrace his first organization, and the many ways, in which it pulled his career down. My next question was, “But don’t you think that this was the only company that gave you the first chance, and that too during recession, when most of the people were not offered jobs? Don’t you think that, if not for that company, you, like many others, would have become a lecturer in some small engineering college in an inconspicuous town?” I know my questions carry a glimpse of my anger, however, the point to be noted is that he did not have any answer, and all he could come up with, was a sheepish smile.

There are weirder reasons like, the present company not allowing the pets inside the company premises, and this article won’t be of much use to such candidates. But I am sure that this article will be circulated among those, who are truly trying to find the right answer to this inevitable question. In my next articles, I will discuss about the right reasons, which should instigate the job change. Till then, remember what not to say as an answer to this question.

Good Luck!

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MOTIVATIONAL STORIES

Fear the Failure so You Get the Courage to Succeed! – Shah Rukh

Khan by Vaibhav Gupta • October 1, 2013

Shah Rukh Khan at Management Convention in Delhi.

Here’s what he said (copied from Delhi Times – The Times of India)

Iam going to say good evening again, because that’s how I started the speech. First of all, it’s really scary here. Some of the biggest managers of the biggest corporations in the biggest convention for management – AIMA.

It’s very sad that in such an august company of people, big business houses and managers, all you could manage was to get a speaker from Bollywood to speak at the convention. The economy must be really bad.

Well,who am I to speak about the economic downtrend across the globe etc, or anything, for that matter? Just reading the topics being discussed before I came on stage, I was frightened. And if

I’m allowed to say so,shit scared.I couldn’t understand a word. Let me tell you one of the discussions they had earlier on in the day – ‘Could financialisation of commodities be used to incentivise supply growth without inflating prices?’

Okay, if you say so. Or no, if you guys are in a bad mood, whatever you say.

The other one – ‘Managing liquidity supply crunch risk of NPA CSR mandate CEOs COOs CFOs UFOs’… mindboggling and numbing for a person like me who can just about say, k-k-k-k-corporation management. And the topic that my friend Shiv (D Shivakumar,president, AIMA) told me is, I have to speak about courage, in this scared state and ill-informed mindset.But here I am,and so are all of you wonderful people.I wish you a great convention and a happy economy, and I want to thank my friend Shiv for giving me this opportunity to speak in front of such an extraordinary amazement of grey matter – all of you highly successful, perhaps the most successful people in the world – and he chose me to give you a speech on success. Am I the only one seeing the irony here? Or are you all too busy holding back your laughter on what I’m going to say?

Apart from my lack of knowledge and fear, the only other thing is that I’m not good at giving discourses on how to succeed. I don’t know what I’m going to say to you highly motivated people that you don’t already know about life.So I’ll bore you with a few details of my life. But let me warn you, this is a recycled speech. It’s generic and it’s simple.

Successful people are almost never able to pinpoint what it was that made them so. Take Warren Buffet. Here’s a guy who must get asked five times a day how he became the most successful investor of his era.His answers? ‘Reinvest your profits, limit what you borrow’ – are no different from what any fool could tell you. But he’s not being cagey – he simply doesn’t know. Success is a wonderful thing, but it tends not to be the sort of experience that we learn from. We enjoy it, perhaps we even deserve it, but we don’t acquire anything from it. And maybe that’s why,it cannot be passed on either.Being successful does not mean my children will also be so, however much I teach them what all did in my life, and they follow it to the letter.

Success just happens, really.

So, talking about how to become successful is a waste of time. So let me tell you, very honestly, whatever happened to me, happened because I’m really scared of failure. I don’t want as much to succeed, as much I don’t want to fail. I come from a very normal middle/lower middle-class family, and I saw a lot of failure. My father was a beautiful man, and the most successful failure in the world. My mom also failed to stay with me long enough to see me become a movie star. We were quite poor, actually – at certain junctures of our lives, I had even experienced what we call in Delhi a kudki – how many of you know about it? This is a thing that the government does when you don’t pay the rent of your house, and they throw you and your stuff on the roads.

Let me tell you, poverty is not an ennobling experience at all. Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes, depression. I’ve seen my parents go through it many times – it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. At an early age after my parents died, I equated poverty with failure. I just didn’t want to be poor. So when I got a chance to act in films, it wasn’t out of any creative desire that I signed my films – it was just purely out of the fear of failure and poverty. Most of them were discards of other actors and the producers could not find anyone else to do them. Deewana, which was my first hit, was actually discarded by an actor called Arman Kohli.Baazigarwas rejected by Mr Salman Khan,and Darrwas negated by Mr Aamir Khan. I did them all just to make sure I was working. The timing or something was right, and that made it happen that I became a big star. I asked Dilip Kumar sa’ab one day – we were watching Devdas together – and I said, ‘Sir, yeh joh picture aapne ki hai, itni achhi acting…’ I had made my own version of Devdas, and I was sitting next to him, and I said, ‘Sir, yeh picture jo aapne ki hai, bahut achhi hai. Kyun ki aapne? Aapko yeh character kyun achha laga?’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘Pata nahin yaar, bas thoda sa… kya thaa woh… Bimalda ek lakh rupaye de rahe the mujhko…’ That was the only reason he did Devdas at that point of time. Of course he’s the greatest actor the world will ever see, but at that point of time, that’s all he wanted. That sometimes, our success is not the direct result of our actions. It just happens on its own, and we take the credit for it, out of embarrassment sometimes.

So I believe the true road to success is not the desire for success,

but the fear of failure. I tell everyone, if you don’t enjoy and be afraid of your failure hard enough, you will never succeed. I’m not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun, but I will insist and hope that all of us will experience it in some measure. The extent of what each one of us perceives as failure must differ, as it should, but I believe that everyone should pass through some stages of failure before they succeed. So how does one fail?

I’m sorry, this is what I teach my kids, so if it sounds a little novice and silly, please excuse me. First and foremost, it’s not the absence of failure that makes you a success, it is your response to failure that actually helps to buffer the reverses you experience. I myself have two responses to failure. First is pragmatism. I believe that if one approach does not work, another one might, as in business, too. The second response is fatalism. I fool myself that it was bound to happen, and that I need to move on, and not get caught up in the oft-repeated question – ‘God, why does it happen to me?’ It happened, move on.

Failure also gives me an incentive to greater exertion, harder work, which invariably leads to greater success in most cases. Failure is an amazing teacher. If you don’t fail, you will never learn. And if you don’t learn, you will never grow. There is a well-known story of a bank president who was asked the secret of his success, and he said, “Right decisions”. How do you get to know how to make the right decisions, came the follow-up question. “Experience,” was the answer. Well, how do you get experience, asked his interrogator. “Wrong decisions,” he replied.

Sometimes, it has also taught me to stop pretending that I’m someone other than what I’m supposed to be. It gives me a clear-cut direction that ‘Hey, maybe I’m not supposed to be doing this. Let me just concentrate on doing and finishing things that really matter to me that really define me, instead of following a particular course that’s actually taking me away from what my core liking is’. KKR, my cricket team – and Shiv knows this – is one such example. Till friends like him gave me advice, I was doing everything. Then I got myself a COO, set up a whole new department, and the job I think has been handled much better than what I think I was (doing). And I’m willing to accept that.

Failure also gets you to find out who your real friends are. The true strength of your relationships only gets tested in the face of strong

adversity. I lost a lot of friends post-Ra.One, apart from losing a lot of audience too. And post-Chennai Express, even though I’ve made no new friends, I have a whole new set of enemies, which is also interesting to know.

Regular failures have also taught me empathy towards others. Being a star, it is easy for me to be prone to the notion that I’m superior, self-sufficient and fantastic, instead of realising that I was just plain lucky or got some lucky breaks. Overcoming some of my failures has made me discover that I have a strong will, and (am) more disciplined than I suspected. It has helped me have confidence in my ability to survive. So, all in all, I think failure is a good thing.

I won’t bore you with more details of how failure is a good thing because you won’t call me back for a talk on success. But I’d like to tell you all that life is not just a checklist of acquisitions, attainments and fulfilments. Your qualifications and CVs don’t matter, your jobs don’t matter. Instead, life is difficult and complicated and beyond your control, and to know that with humility, respecting your failures will help you survive its vicissitudes. There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures in life. I say making because I believe failure is not an exterior force. I believe it happens due to our own actions, our own reactions, in such convoluted ways sometimes that we may not understand, but we are the reason for it. So don’t be weighed down by it – relish it, cherish it, the experience, and learn from it. By accepting it all and experiencing it will you experience success, not in isolation of life’s full offerings.

Let me conclude by saying that my hope for you is a lifelong love of learning, exciting and inspiring projects, dreams, businesses, profits, power lunches or whatever turns you guys and girls on. But alongside, I wish you a fair number of moderate failures. By experiencing all, I hope that you will experience success. Success is never final, just like failure is never fatal. Courage is ill-defined if you think it means doing something macho, risky or chancy. If that happens at somebody else’s cost, it’s even less courageous. Courage is doing whatever you are afraid to do – personally scared to do – in whichever capacity you work. There can be no courage unless you are scared. So be scared to feel courage, be fearful.

I believe one has to have the fear of failure so much that you get the courage to succeed.And that, my friends,is my learned piece of courage in success or what I call the success of failure, and being scared enough to be courageous, to make it so. Or if I were to put it into words that surround me, when I entered here and I was scared of all this corporate jargon that I heard, ‘This is my theory of the management of high-rising failure to convert it into success by growth index of 100%, while understanding the indices of fear and not compromising the syntax of our courage globally while keeping a holistic 360 degree view of our domestic market through rigorous system and processes.’

In simple terms or film language, which is what I do – ‘If at first you don’t succeed, reload and try again. Shoot fast, shoot first and be ready to take a bullet too. And remember what Don said – “Iss company ke management ke dushman ki sabse badi galti yeh hai, ki woh is company ka dushman hai. Kyunki jab tak dushman apni pehli chaal chalta hai, yeh company apni agli chaal chaal chuki hoti hai.”’

Speech transcribed by Chandna Arora

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EXPERT INTERVIEW TIPS

Expert Interview Tips – When I Didn’t Know the Answer to an Interview Question! (7 Expert Tips to Handle Such Situation) by Vaibhav Gupta • September 19, 2013

“O my God!”

“What? – I am rejected!”

That was Harry’s instant reaction, when he got the rejection verdict

in one of the interviews that he had faced. He couldn’t believe his ears when the news broke out to him. His first reaction was to sink in his sofa – engendered with dejection! The memories of the day when he faced this interview resurfaced, and he started recounting the events of that day. His mind was grappled with astonishment, when he realized that it was just one question that he couldn’t answer. “Gosh! But my interview went fine, except for a question that I could not answer.”

“Damn the Interviewer! What does she think of herself?”

“Does she know the answers to all the questions?”

“Does she wish to hire a human or God?”

“How can she reject someone for just one wrong answer?”

Who knows how much time he spent, sunk deeply in the sofa and thoughts, simultaneously, cursing the interviewer. Finally, he accepted the reality, and went to the bathroom. Once the cold splash of water had rinsed his face thoroughly, he looked up in the mirror. He asked himself, “Was it really just one wrong answer… or something else?”

Now was the time for introspection. Upon carefully parsing the entire interview process that ensued the other day, he realized that it, probably, was not the wrong answer that got him rejected, but something else. To confirm his suspicion, he met with me the next day expecting that I, being an interview expert, would be able to give him a fresh perspective.

Next day, our meeting started with his narration of the entire interview process. Bingo, there it was! After 15 minutes of verbatim narration, problem was spotted. Problem, certainly, was related to that one question that he could not answer. But it was not related to his inability to comprehend or answer that question; it was the way he handled the situation – or mishandled it. It finally dawned on us that he actually banged the table the moment he realized that he did not have the answer to that question. A stare into oblivion followed the banging, causing an awkward silence, before

finally admitting to the fact that he did not have an answer. He banged the table; however, others may resort to reactions like, banging forehead, fidgeting fingers, lint picking, biting lips, blabbering gibberish, awkwardly stammering or any other signs to show resentment or nervousness.

The important question that followed the process of narration and recollection was, “Can there be a better way of handling the situation, when a candidate does not have an answer to a question asked during interview?”

Now, there may not be an infallible strategy to encounter such a situation, but I can suggest a few ways which can act as a graceful mechanism to manage such disaster. However, it would be wiser if we start by identifying the situations that may arise and devise the strategies apropos to the respective situations. Following are the instances in which a candidate may be dumb-founded:

1. When the interviewee didn’t understand the meaning of a question or a word – Strong communication skills, and an ability to comprehend the conversation are among the greatest demands of current business environment. Emphatically, a candidate must possess strong communication skills that include a strong vocabulary too so that one doesn’t stagger at any question asked by interviewer. However, no person in this world may attain an exhaustive vocabulary. A situation may still arise as it happened with one of the candidates, when interviewer asked, “What are your pet peeves?” Unfortunately, the candidate, though well spoken, didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘peeves’. But did the candidate panic? No! Or did she say, “sorry, but I don’t know the meaning of that word, or ‘I

didn’t understand the question’, or ‘I don’t know the answer’.” Candidate could have said any of the above, but she did not. Instead, she politely requested, “Could you please rephrase the question?” Implication is the same, but it was an extremely positive way of saying the same thing. An interviewer deals with several candidates daily, and is aware that candidates are not expected to know every word. Interviewer is trying to find out if you have the ability to choose positive or smart words to say the same thing. Having said that, it’s imperative to build strong language skills, because you can’t ask an interviewer to rephrase every question. However, for an instance or two, use the strategy discussed above. First advice: “Request the recruiter, choosing a positive set of words, to rephrase the question.”

2. 3. When a question asked was out of a topic that was

never covered in your curriculum or was not a part of your job profile - Ideally, a recruiter would never ask you about something unless he doesn’t expect you to have learned or experienced it as a part of your education or work profile. But, what can you possibly do in a situation, when you never did or studied what recruiter asked about? You could’ve simply told the recruiter that you never did what he was asking for, and interviewer should stick to what’s mentioned in the resume. But wait! Let’s rephrase the same thing to your maximum advantage. You could simply present the same thing in much stronger way by saying, “During my education and experience, I have garnered strong technical know-how and expertise. I can understand that the skill that you mentioned must be of great importance to this role, and I would love to learn that new skill through training and guidance. I am sure that my existing knowledge combined with this new skill will enable me to deliver a performance beyond expectations. However, I would like to know from you the importance of this skill in this role” Through this answer, you stressed on your current capabilities, because of which you were invited for this interview; you also showed your openness towards developing new skills; you gave recruiter a thought that this skill

could simply be learned through training and guidance; finally, you made recruiter re-think whether this skill was actually required in this role or not. Most importantly, you told the recruiter that you didn’t know it without actually saying it. But you can’t keep answering ‘I will learn’ to every question asked. It is strictly for something out of the blue. Second advice: “Never say you don’t know it. Say you can learn it.”

4. When, in a behavioral question, you actually had never faced the situation given by recruiter - One thing must always be kept in mind that recruiter is highly aware of what he or she is asking for. Your answer to a situational or behavioral question demonstrates your ability to cope with the pressure of working in teams, and dealing with a large pool of people with various mind sets, especially in case of large cross-functional teams. So how would you tell your interviewer that you had never faced a disagreement with another team member, or supervisor, or the management? Actually, you don’t! Never say that you don’t have an idea because you never came across such a situation for any of the situational or behavioral questions. However, you can start by saying, “Apologies for not being able to share a real experience since it hasn’t happened yet, but if such a situation comes, I believe that I am going to… ” The idea is to think about the situation, and tell recruiter how rational your thought and strategy would be, to deal with any given crisis. Your inexperience with a situation so far doesn’t guarantee that you will never have to face it. It may surface anytime, while working in a team. Recruiter wants to know if you would be able to handle. Third advice: “Never duck from a situational question, even if you haven’t faced it yet; imagine, think and answer.”

5. When you are asked to measure the weight of an airplane without using any scale – or to tell the number of light bulbs, recruiter’s office building has? Questions can be many with varied answers. However, way to reckon your answer is just one – presence of mind! Global corporations, in a race to emerge as the best and most favored brand in their industry, are banking on the innovative products, services, and

operational ideas. The company that comes up with a unique product or idea reaps the advantages of being an early bird. This has significantly altered the recruitment strategies; hence the recruiters’ question banks too have changed, accordingly. Most candidates feel flabbergasted, when challenged by one of such weird questions. Remember that a recruiter is not a fool to have asked such a question. Through your reaction or answer, the inability or capability to think out of the box, perform in a high pressure environment, and ability to come up with an answer with trouble shooting attitude, are adjudged. Whatever your answer may be, recruiter is more focused on the way you derive the answer; the logical route that you treaded to reach that answer. Don’t hesitate to request a minute to think, ask questions from recruiter to collect necessary data, and formulate your answer using a pen and a piece paper. Fourth advice: “Do whatever you can to find a logical answer, but don’t panic!”

6. A personal question, especially a non-relevant or illegal one, which you don’t wish to answer - There is a whole list of questions that an interviewer has no right to ask, however, this doesn’t proscribe some interviewers from asking such questions, intentionally or unintentionally. You could say, “Hey, you can’t ask me that. That’s illegal.”, and that would succeed as well in refraining the interviewer from asking such questions, but at the end of the day, it might result in losing that job opportunity if the recruiter was pompous. So we have to adopt a way that gets us a ‘safe exit’. You can start by saying, “I don’t mind answering that question, however, I would first like to understand the objective behind asking this question, and perspective that the organization stands to gain through my answer.” In all probabilities, the interviewer will understand what you intend to say, and revoke his question. Otherwise too, interviewer will have to give you a justification behind asking such question. Fifth advice: “Object to an illegal question, but in a way that interviewer feels neither offended, nor should be able to hold anything against you.”

7. When we are doubtful regarding the correctness of our answer - “Dilemma is to human mind” may not be a

famous quote by someone big and well-known, however, it is a stark human reality. Usually, it happens because of incomplete information about a subject. It may also happen, when there is more than one school of thoughts existing for a subject. In case of an interview, there is a strong possibility that interviewer may not ratify the idea that we behold. Every interview has two aspects – technical and behavioral. There is no remedy for technical incompetence, however, for a behavioral ambiguity; it is always advisable to present your opinion, while simultaneously showing respect towards alternate theories. You can say, “The way I think is… , however, I am open for a heart to heart discussion with someone who believes otherwise.” There you go! You told your perspective frankly, while showing your respect and acceptance for others’ thoughts as well. Sixth advice: “Always present your opinion only. Don’t give a verdict; respect other theories too.”

8. When we contradict one of our previous answers and get caught - A candidate applying for a sales job (which demanded a great deal of networking), when asked about his weakness, said, “I am a reserved kind of a person.” Immediately, the next question catapulted at him was, “How do you do networking then?” Cat caught his tongue! The next step that he took, eliminated any chance for him to land in that job. He defended himself vehemently, and the interviewer, as his job demanded, kept digging. Soon, it became a heated argument, and you can all guess the outcome. What could he have done differently? First thing first! Accept that you made a blunder. To find an escape route is a rare opportunity in such situations. However, one can try to soothe the situation by presenting a different perspective, and smartly divert the topic. One could say, “I prefer to stay alone during my spare time, however, as far as professional networking is concerned, I am an adroit networker, with strong business links in this industry. My networking with over 500 industry professionals can easily be transformed into big business opportunity for the organization that I work for.” Now, the interviewer would be more interested in exploring your contacts, and probable

business avenues for the company. But the moment you start arguing and fighting, the game’s over. In any situation, no matter what strategy you deploy, maintaining the poise in an awkward situation, and handling it with utmost diplomacy and presence of mind are the keys to success. Seventh advice: “If you’ve made a mistake, don’t argue. It only makes matter worse.”

If you believe that you handled the situation well, and still got rejected; don’t hold up. Prepare for the next interview, because it’s not the end of the journey.

Good Luck!

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Expert Interview Tips – ‘Rejected’ in Interviews or was it just a ‘Lack of Consensus’? (5 Top Reasons for Interview Rejections). by Vaibhav Gupta • September 17, 2013

We must have heard several times from those around us that someone attended interview in an organization, and got rejected. That engendered a feeling of dejection in the candidate. While the candidate was still trying to figure out the interview questions, which he might have answered wrongly, the people close to him were trying their level best to console him using most soothing and encouraging words. However, no one ever thought of jolting the candidate out of this astonishment by saying, “it’s not a rejection but just a lack of consensus.” Being a recruiter, I observed that the unsuccessful interview cases has been higher in number than the successful ones. My experience increased, and with that strengthened the notion that except in a few cases, most of so-called ‘rejected’ cases should actually be termed as cases with ‘lack of consensus’. I really despise the term ‘rejected’ because

using that word demeans the candidate’s qualities and skills.

The mutual questions and answers round that ensue between the recruiter and candidate has only one aim that is, to explore if they can work together as a team by fulfilling each others’ professional and personal requirements. If they both can reach a consensus (or agreement), it’s a done deal. In other cases, all we can say is that it just didn’t work out. Even if it could not be worked out due to the candidate’s inferior technical or communication skills, it simply meant that the candidate is needed to hone the skills so he or she can re-apply to this organization.

Having said all that, there are a few situations in which the candidate actually gets ‘rejected’. Rejections always happen for the acts of interviewees, which are unacceptable by professional or personal standards. Most of such actions can be comprehensively distributed among the top 5 categories listed below:

• Misconduct or misbehavior: I remember a candidate, who reached earlier than the allotted interview time, and started badgering the receptionist to arrange his interview earlier than the given time, because he had to leave urgently. All the candidates were already informed that there could be delays. I did interview him, but for me it was actually over even before it started. There are more cases where candidate misbehaved with receptionist, recruiter, coördinator, or in most daring cases, even with the hiring authority. The reasons varied; ranging from time issues to candidate ending up using cuss words during interview. Misbehavior demonstrates and reflects on bad upbringing and negative attitude, which can never be acceptable in any interview.

• Negative body language: In most of the interview processes, several questions are repeated in various forms by different interviewers to make sure that the candidate answered all the questions truthfully. Some of the candidates get piqued by this process, and a few even start banging the tables out of sheer displeasure. Hiring is associated with big risks. A recruiter, like a cautious buyer, has the right to repeatedly confirm the product’s quality, before he finally makes up the mind to buy it. Other negative body gestures include gestures that show lack of; energy and positive aggression;

empathy; confidence; understanding; calmness; and politeness.

• Lies or fraudulent behavior: Lies and frauds are criminal offenses that can never be spared, and may end up ruining a candidate’s career. Once a candidate forged the salary details to get a better offer from the recruiting organization. However, he wrongly assumed that the recruiter did not have any link with the HR of his present company. In reality, the recruiter previously worked with his current organization, and was well aware that no such letter could ever be issued by that company. The candidate lost the offer, of course, but also lost his present job, . Forging the employment tenures, profile descriptions, education details, and salary certificates, are all included in fraudulent activities.

• Boastfulness: Some candidates think that if they boast about their personal relationship with the CEO of the company, it will help them to get selected. However, they fail to realize that once a CEO steps into his company premises, he means only business, and every decision that he makes must be profit-oriented. Secondly, boasting about performance, while it was just average or above average, does not help either. Boasting may impress the recruiter, but the impression would be ephemeral as the reality will come out in a reference check.

• Greed or being unreasonable: Last but the most important reason of rejection is being too greedy or unreasonable. It’s a fact that candidate wants to extract the most, while recruiter aims to save most. Between this tug of war, there exists a line of reality, where both must coincide. This could never happen if either of them was unreasonably far from this line of reality. Recruiters are largely driven by the organizational benchmarks. They are aware about the prevailing market standards. Usually the job aspirants, when it comes to salary expectations, are unreasonable. Salary expectations beyond reasonable limits, coupled with rigidity, causes rejection.

Reasons could be more, however, upon closer analysis, most would fall under one of the above mentioned categories. If nothing mentioned above happened during your interview, then you can be rest assured that the interviewer carried a pleasant image of you, and might call when something more suitable as per your profile and skill set comes up.

If rejection was the verdict in any of the interviews that you appeared for, just check the list above to ensure that you did not make any mistake listed above. If not, then be confident that you were not rejected; it could not be worked out just because of ‘lack of consensus’.

Good Luck!

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