How to answer open ended questions in a job interview

‘Tell me about yourself’, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’, ‘Why did you leave your last role?’, ‘Why do you want to work here?’. These are questions that haunt many of us before, during, and after job interviews. What am I supposed to say? These questions are far simpler than they seem and the answers can literally be whatever you want. Don’t worry, I’ll explain!

These questions are called ‘open ended’, which means that there isn’t really a ‘right answer’ but there are potentially wrong answers and you need to be aware of potential pitfalls. Ultimately there are three approaches to questions like these; Keep it professional and strictly work related, be personal and talk about your life outside of work, or mix the two together!

Option 1 - Keeping it professional

This approach feels the easy and obvious one, until you start to think about it, then you realise it’s a notoriously difficult approach to take. ‘Tell me about yourself’, if you start talking about work you’re doing two things, just repeating stuff that’s on your CV (which they’ve hopefully read!), and making yourself seem…boring? Almost as though your whole life is your work. When you meet new people at a bar or pub, do you introduce yourself by talking about work? Hopefully not! Remember, job interviews are there to help everyone get to know each other and make decisions on whether or not they want to sit next to you 5 days a week in an office, so if you come across as someone who is so focused on work they lack personality you may be shooting yourself in the foot! This is not to say you should avoid touching on your job, just avoid sounding like it is the only thing that defines you as a person.

Option 2 - Get personal

This one understandably feels risky, how personal do you go? Are the interviewers really interested in my two cats and budding stamp collection? Maybe, maybe not. But this is an opportunity to ‘tell your story’, where are you from? What is your educational background? Why did you get into the industry you’re in? Why did you choose to grow that mustache? These help form a picture of a full and interesting person, which is much more appealing than a talking CV. You don’t need to go into too much detail, a good rule of thumb is that you should go as personal as you would should you be meeting someone for the first time. The pros of this approach are that you come across as a real person, and also it helps break the ice, setting the tone for your conversational style going forward.

Option 3 - A mix!

You guessed it, the final option is to combine the above approaches, and this would be my recommendation for your approach. Despite the truths of option 2, this is still a job interview, and so the interviewers are going to be principally concerned with your professional life. As mentioned above you don’t want to come across as though work is your whole personality, but you do want to show that you take your career seriously. So for a question like ‘what is your five year plan’ a good approach would be to address your personal goals (buy a house, start a family, earn a sustainable income), and marry this to your professional ambition.

For example, ‘In 5 years I would like to buy my first house, in order to achieve this I am looking for long term, stable employment with a competitive income.’ This is a perfectly reasonable response and showcases several things, firstly that you are looking to the future and  not stagnant, secondly that you are looking to commit to a job and can therefore be relied upon to remain with the company for the foreseeable future. This approach is key to showcasing your personality and your priorities outside of work, whilst also underlining that you are serious about your career and can be relied upon to treat work with the respect it needs.

These are the three best ways to approach open ended questions like ‘tell me about yourself’, and all have good pros and cons. The key is that you come across as an interesting, and interested person that they can envision sitting next to in the office, go to lunch with, and ultimately spend the majority of the week talking to. A key thing to remember, don’t be negative! It’s easy to slip into negativity when talking about yourself or your personal life, but this needs to be nipped in the bud! 

For more advice about open ended questions, or interview coaching in general please do get in touch at hello@wearekenny.com, call us on 020 3951 0393, or visit our website https://www.wearekenny.com/interview-coaching.