How to Not Botch an Interview

When you’re on an interview, you’re going to be asked goal setting questions, hands-down. Unless you’re prepared, these questions are going to stump you, especially if you’re unsure of your career goals. What does a kid straight out of high school know about his future? How about a college graduate who hated his major and just needs to pay the bills? Whatever your career status, you’ll need answers to these tough questions. Formulate your answers the night before your interview and go over your responses again right before you sit down in the hot seat.

What do you have to do when you have a job interview?

Examples of Goal Setting Questions

The following questions are likely to be asked on your next interview:

• Why do you want to work for our company?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• How do you set personal goals? Do you follow through with these goals?
• What are your short-term and long-term goals?

Clear Intentions

Yes, it’s important to answer these questions “correctly” in order to impress your future employer. It’s also imperative, though, that you actually have your own career goals. You should also know what type of you work you want and are well suited for. The interviewer wants to see that your goals are supported by your qualifications.

This can be difficult if the job you’re interviewing for doesn’t exactly inspire you. Maybe you’re not dreaming of a future in insurance sales, but you’re qualified for the position and you’re having a tough time finding any other job. You don’t have to say that you want to be in insurance for the rest of your life.

Instead, you can say that you want to work in a job that helps people when they’re having difficult times and that you’ve always liked the structure of a business setting.

Enthusiasm

Being able to determine your long-term goals is great, so long as you know which short-term goals you have to meet in order to get there. You have to express where you want to be in the future as well as how you plan on reaching that point. This way, the interviewer will view you as both driven and responsible.

Also, in a successful interview, your personal career goals will match up with the company’s goals. When a group of people have the same goal, there’s a huge motivator for accomplishing tasks.

Demonstrate Your Expertise

When expressing your career goals during an interview, your aspirations have to coincide with the company. For example, if you dream of being a chef but you’re interviewing for an office position in a culinary school, your career goal could be to connect with culinary students to find out where the world’s best chefs start from. You have to show your future manager that you’ve done the leg work when it comes to researching the company you’re interviewing with.

Interest in the company, aside from simply getting a pay check every week, shows drive. Since you don’t yet work for the company, you may not identify too closely with the business’ mission, but you still can unearth one or two main goals that you share with the department.