How to Answer Almost Any Interview Question
There is a blog entry on how to answer 23 of the most common interview questions. For people who don’t have experience interviewing, this is a good guideline. I especially like the answer for #20.
But we shouldn’t really need a list of stock answers to interview questions, there should be a formula for it.
The Formula For Interview Question Answers
All good answers have the same format: honesty and positivity. That’s the basic pattern for most answers to interview questions.
So what if you’re negative or have trouble telling the truth? You have two choices: become more positive and honest or fake it. I prefer the self-improvement route. But if you can play the game and fake it really well, more power to you.
Then How Do You Become More Positive?
It just takes practice. There is an old Tony Robbins technique called the 10 day positivity challenge. You can read about it in his book, Awaken the Giant Within.
If you don’t want to read the book1, it says that you shouldn’t dwell with negative thoughts for more than a minute. And you do this for 10 days straight. If you mess up, you have to start over from day 1. So if you’re on your 9th day and you happen to complain or get angry about something for a minute, you have to start over.
It’s not an easy challenge—especially if you’re a negative person like I was. Since I was a negative person, I thought this exercise was retarded. So I wasn’t open to this exercise. But I tried it anyway, and it’s pretty cool. It’s not going to turn you into a super positive person over night—or even in ten days, but it helped. It helps you to feel what it’s like to be more positive.
Another method for positivity is to change your sentence structure to make it sound more positive. This also conditions your mind to start thinking more positively. You can read about that in my last blog post here.
What About Honesty, How Do I Become More Honest?
I know a lot of people are scared to be honest. They use little, white lies to protect themselves. They might actually delude themselves to think they’re lying to protect the other person. But in reality, they’re doing it to protect themselves from an argument, confrontation, or something else that they want to avoid.
The only advice I can give you is start being more honest. Just speak your mind as much as possible. That’s what I did. Now I didn’t become 100% honest like Brad Blanton. But I was close. The result was that I became more authentic and real. It also helped me to become more assertive and confident.
It’s an interesting exercise. But I recommend trying the positivity stuff first than the honest stuff. That way your mind is more in the positive mindset when you’re being honest.
So go through the list and see how you would answer those questions when you’re coming from a positive and honest mindset.
1 It’s a great book. You should read it anyway if even you don’t think you need “self-improvement.”
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