After
submitting your job application and waiting an agonizing amount of
time, you’ve finally landed an interview for a position you’re
absolutely thrilled about. Congratulations! If you’re serious, you’re
probably going extraordinary lengths to research the company, talk to
current and past employees, and prepare stories for those pesky
behavioral questions you’re likely to get in the interview. That’s
great!
But,
even with the most prepared interview candidates, I've found that a lot
of people still make one critical mistake. They’ll deliver absolutely
fantastic and relevant stories, and I’ll be completely hooked—all the
way up until they end with, “and... yeah” or just an awkward pause.
So,
how exactly can you prevent yourself from flubbing the end of your
answer? Practice definitely makes perfect, but rarely will you be able
to prepare for each individual question the interviewer will ask. With
this in mind, here’s the plan for how to conclude an interview response
that’ll get you through most interview questions.
Option 1: Connect to the Position or Company
When
a hiring manager asks, “What’s your greatest strength?” or “Tell me
about yourself,” he or she really means that plus, “and how that will
that benefit me and my company?” Knowing this, one great way to conclude
an interview answer is to relate it back to the position or company.
Something
like this would work well: “…and that’s why I’m actually so exited
about this position—I think it’ll be a great opportunity for me to use
my knack for detail-oriented work,” or “…and that’s in fact what drew me
to apply for this position: the chance to contribute to a company that
values transparency.”
Option 2: Summarize and Get Back to the Question
You
won’t always be able to bring it back to the position or company (nor
should you—it’ll start sounding too formulaic), so here’s an option that
will almost always work: Summarize and go back to the original
question. This is especially effective if you have a tendency to be a
little long-winded, as it’ll show that you were focused on answering the
question all along.
For
example: “So, in general, you could say I take a very lead-by-example
approach to leadership,” or “Going back to the original question, I do
make every effort to learn about and see the issue from the other
person’s point of view before taking any action when faced with a
conflict.”
Option 3: Ask Your Own Question
Lastly,
to mix it up a bit, you can try finishing some of your responses with
your own questions. After all, an interview should be a two-way street.
And, the best part is, you’ll likely make a better impression and build
better rapport with your interviewer if your interview feels more like a
conversation than a Q & A session. (Unless, of course, the company
is a bit more buttoned-up and clearly has a script of prepared questions
to ask. Then, just let them do their thing.)
So,
if you’re asked how well you work in a team setting, you can talk a bit
about how you do, give an example, and then wrap it up with a quick
question like, “As I said before, working on teams really helps me be
more productive and creative. Actually, while we’re on the topic, can
you tell me a bit more about how the team operates here?”
Now that
you have an idea of how to finish up a response to an interview
question, it’s worth practicing this a few times before the big day. The
idea is that you should be able to use these general rules of thumb
even when faced with an interview question you’ve never heard of before,
but, as with all things related to interviews, a little practice never
hurts.
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