When the interviewer asks you where you see yourself in five years, what will you say? How about describing your ideal working environment? What are your strengths? And what are your weaknesses? How do you take criticism? How do you deal with conflict situations? What motivates you? What is your management style?

 

Yikes. If you are not prepared for these kinds of probing questions, they will undermine your interview. Pondering Socrates or Freud is not necessary preparation for your job interview. Still, taking time to do some soul searching is helpful when it comes to presenting yourself in an attractive way.

 

Each question posed by your interviewer requires that you sift through a repertoire of professional and personal experiences, gazing at your life in an instant and conjuring up an answer to the basic question: who are you? Doing that on the fly is bound to be confusing. You should know yourself before you shake the interviewer's hand and flash your first friendly smile. The prospect can daunt even for those of us who are in touch with our inner child.

 

To make substantial headway in self-reflection, spend some time on the following exercises. When considering your responses, think beyond your professional life and current circumstances. Include instances as far back as your youth.

After you spend an evening or afternoon reflecting on your life, you might wish to have others explore your responses with you. Look for themes and trends in your responses, finding information that overlaps. Focus on what energizes you and what saps your spirit. Notice your preferences. Consider for example what we can discover about Suzanne's professional aspirations and tendencies from her responses.

Five accomplishments that I enjoyed include:

Five things that make me proud include:

Three times that I felt highly motivated to accomplish something include:

Three scenarios in which I lacked motivation to accomplish something include:

I felt appreciated by people when:

By analyzing even these first five questions, we get a sense of what kind of job would fit Suzanne well. For example, we see that Suzanne enjoys influencing people; each of the accomplishments that she enjoyed includes affecting the way that other people think or act. She also feels gratified when she is able to bring people together for a common purpose they might have overlooked. The things that make Suzanne proud are a bit more diverse. Some include a sense of meeting difficult challenges-like learning French through immersion and raising the bar of performance or being in shape. Having vision means that she has something to offer that affects common purpose. Acting ethically toward people also seems important to her.

 

It already begins to make sense, then, that she would feel motivated to accomplish things when she initiates them, when she is accountable to other people, or when she needs to meet a specific goal. Deadlines appear to affect her in positive ways by helping her to focus when she might not otherwise. Contrarily, her energy and drive are sapped when she works in isolation without gaining feedback, when the tasks are rote and do not require creativity or initiative, and when she perceives that people are treated badly. She feels appreciated by her employer when her supervisor recognizes her vision, drive, and ability to focus and gives her the space she needs to excel while still staying connected with her. She feels appreciated when her company gives her a raise for good work, but also when others verbally praise her. And, even though she likes to work without tight supervision, she feels appreciated when her supervisor has time for her.

 

Intriguing as these discoveries might be for Suzanne, she cannot unload her personal psyche on the interviewer. She still has to formulate professional responses to specific questions. Knowledge about the company provides guidance for how to craft these materials. Self-knowledge provides the raw materials for devising compelling responses.