[MUSIC] Welcome to week 7 in the job interviewing and resume writing capstone project. This week you're going to practice a set of advance interview questions. These include behavioral questions, as well as one what if question, and one wild card question. The first thing you'll do for this milestone is review the advanced interviewing lessons that focus on structuring your response. They're attached to this module. Make sure you're familiar with the S-T-A-R, star strategy, as well as the other three response strategies you learned in course three. You'll then respond to three behavioral interview questions, which I'll review with you shortly. These are common questions that you're likely to get in any interview, but you should think about how you would tailor your response to the position you've targeted. You'll then respond to one situational interview question generated at random. These are the hypothetical what would you do if questions that you learned about earlier. I'll explain to you shortly how to use the random question generator. Finally, you'll respond to one wild-card interview question, also generated at random. These are questions that get at your ability to handle the unexpected. The rubrics you learned about last week will be used again this week, but adapted to the specific questions. The behavioral responses should use the S-T-A-R structure. For the other two questions, use the structure of your choice. Here's the first behavioral interview question. This is a particularly tough question, because you have to describe in detail a specific project, task, or assignment that you were not successful on. And people don't like to talk about failures. But a hiring manager wants to know that you're not afraid of failure and that you can learn from it. You'll find many hiring managers who even go so far as to claim that people learn more from failures than from successes. I personally have always found this a debatable not simplistic idea, after all you never learn to ride a bike by falling down, you learned at the moment you discovered how to maintain your balance on two wheels. That a-ha moment was when the real learning occurred. Still, research into expert performance has shown that top performers regard failure or error differently than do most people, top performers have a special attitude towards failure. They look at it as feedback, as data to be examined and learned from. Instead of something to be ashamed of or something to hide from. From a hiring manager's point of view, a candidate who's never failed at something, has never taken any risks. Which means he or she may not be right for a hiring organization, not in the 21st century. The 21st century demands innovation, and an entrepreneurial spirit. The essence of which is captured quite well in this recent article for news weight. So if you come from a culture where failure is stigmatized, you're going to have to change your attitude to align with the 21st century work culture. In business and in life, no risk means no reward. Your response to the failure question should be longer than most. When you face this question, in a real life interview, you should not answer immediately. You should think before speaking. You should tailor your response to the moment and to the situation. In this milestone of course, you're thinking time is what you do on your own before you record the responses but your recorded response should run about what it would in real life, four to five minutes. Enough time to communicate both your experience and the lessons learned. Be sure to select an experience where you can demonstrate that you took a calculated risk and failed but learn from this experience and were more successful in your next project. It's important to demonstrate introspection and your desire to learn and improve. Select an event that even if beyond your control demonstrates how you changed your thinking and actions to accommodate what you learned. Most organizations are looking for people who are not afraid to push themselves, but at the same time recognized when they could have done something better, and have adopted this lesson to the next task they worked on. That's what your response should demonstrate. And the next question should be much easier to answer. Here the hiring manager wants to hear about something you feel good about. It can be from school, your personal life, or your past work experience. All are equally valuable in helping the interviewer gain insight into what you consider important in your life. Again, this response should take a bit longer although not as long as the failure question. A good response will be in the three to four minute range, although going a bit longer is better than giving a short answer. And be sure to highlight at the end of your response what makes this one of your proudest accomplishments. Here's the third behavioral interview question that you'll respond to. This too is a common question. In a workplace conflict in unavoidable, whether that be conflict between coworkers, between a boss and a subordinate or with customers or vendors. A hiring manager wants to know how you manage conflict. Your response to this question lets the interviewer find out how well you can deal with the every day situations that come up at work. Your response should reflect that you're aware that conflict naturally occurs. You understand that conflict is unavoidable, but combat is optional. A good response shows how you contribute to resolving conflict. Communication, patience, a genuine desire to understand the other person, all are commendable qualities. A bad response denies having conflict in your previous work experiences. This indicates you're either not being honest or you're oblivious to events happening around you. Both are red flags to an interviewer. It's also not a good idea to say you avoid conflict or just keep your mouth shut. Someone who does this wouldn't be a good candidate for most organizations. Organizations who want active, engaged employees who are always looking to improve. They don't want employees who run away from conflict. After all what would be the next thing you run away from. Your next two questions will be selected by a random question generator. You'll answer one situational interview question and one wild-card question. Now remember, an interviewer may pose a hypothetical scenario based question to assess your problem solving ability. A wildcard question, that confronts you with an unexpected situation and it's posed to get you to think on your feet. Hiring managers ask these questions to see how you would actually react under such circumstances. Is there difficult situations to simulate? So what I ask you to do is respond as if you were getting the question in real time. I posted the questions as an Excel workbook. You open the random question workbook. There's one for each question type and you'll see the question. Copy the question into the clipboard to save it because it's coming from a random number generator and every time you open your workbook you'll get another question. So go ahead and paste the question into a document so you can remember it, then record your response. Include the question when you post your response. So your peer reviewers know what your question was. There you have it. I wish you well with this week's milestone. Practice your storytelling skills, because good responses to behavioral interview questions depend on those skills. Don't ramble, don't meander, just tell your story. [MUSIC]
