101 Great Answers to Toughest Interview Questions

by Ron Fry

Book Overview

Updated for today's job market, the classic interview prep guide helps you say the right words and get the job you want. No matter how good you look, how much research you've done, or how perfectly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156414464X
• ISBN13: 9781564144645
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Career Press
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Great answers to hard questions

This book does a great job of helping you answer the most difficult interview questions. As a training manager, who trains managers and executives on how to interview, I feel I am qualified to say this book works. This book is a wonderful resource once you get the interview. This leaves us with the question, "How do you get an interview?" Simple, know the type of job you want and pursue it, if you do not know what type of job you want you may want to read the classic, "How to find your dream job and make it a reality." By Jason McClure. Read this book, and practice for your job interviews and you will be successful in your job hunt.

This is how Microsoft interviews

I personally recommend this book. When I interviewed with Microsoft several years ago, I was astonished at how IDENTICAL their interviewing process was with that described in this book. After reading the book, I was not surprised at ANY of the questions that were thrown at me. And I could tell exactly when the interviewer was trying to "drill down" to catch me off-guard. I highly recommend this book to anybody who is interviewing for the first time, or for anybody who has had a job for a decade or more and is just now venturing out again. Interviewing tactics have changed radically since a decade ago.

Why not?

This book can rehabilitate you and may indeed place you where you'd like to be. I have been on both sides of the interview process over many years and it's amazing, in retrospect, that I've managed to work or have any decent employees. From the most basic preparation, (something I've never done- except to fret over my outfit,) to practicing, seems like a no brainer- I speak for myself. EVERYBODY knows you're not suppossed to dis a past employer, right? I've known that for years, and I just did it last week. I knew when I was doing it, that it was wrong; but I couldn't dig my way into a more positive response. In fact, that's why I bought the book. Fry takes you around those stumbling blocks with a variety of approaches, even with regard to keeping a flow in the facts that you are putting forth. Of course, you have to do the work. As with every manual, it isn't a novel, it's behavior, and practice, not how well, (again, in my case,) you `understand' it.You can't go wrong with the material here. It's sound, it's been tested and it's completely common sensical- it just doesn't come by osmosis. Do it, it helps. Good luck.

Helped me get the job

Perhaps the best endorsement I can give for a book on interviewing is that it helped me get the job I wanted. I graduated recently from an Ivy League college with a great record, but I failed after a round of interviews to secure the jobs I wanted. I bought Ron Fry's book, studied it, and realised the many things I was doing wrong during interviews. This is probably obvious to the savvy, but fresh graduates may not realise that interviews are not the time and place to "be yourself", but to prepare and approach it purposefully like a saleman trying to get the customer to buy the product.

Overcome the Communications Stall In Job Interviewing

Our company's research has shown that poor communications cause more stalled progress in organizations than any other issue. One of the primary areas where this occurs is in hiring. Most people end up giving an incomplete and misleading impression of how they would do in a new job. Most interviewers fail to ask and pursue questions in ways that will overcome this problem. Mr. Fry's book helps surmount both problems so that the right person gets the right job for her or him, and the company involved. One of the great strengths of this book is that it has an organized process for a job seeker to prepare for interviews. As Mr. Fry puts it, "Interviewing is 50 percent preparation." There are pages of questions to be answered as background before considering the questions that interviewers are likely to inquire about. This preparation makes developing those answers much easier, and improves the quality of the responses as well. But beyond that, the preparation will also help the job seeker do some thoughtful self-examination for determining where your strengths, interests, and background fit. The author does a nice job of explaining that the key question is: "Who are you?" in terms of your potential ability to do the job.Mr. Fry encourages honesty, and shows ways that interviewers will try to check on that quality in you. On the other hand, he also encourages you to give responses that will play well with the interviewer (spinning as it were). I suspect that a more straightforward approach would be more appealing to most interviewers. For example, one sample question is to describe the latest book you have read. Rather than describe some wholly inappropriate book, he encourages an answer with a business-related book like Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits . . . . I think a better response would be to say, "Why don't I describe a book I read that relates to this position?" Then if the interviewer doesn't object, start talking about one that seems relevant. Otherwise, you can give the impression of being someone who only reads business books, which is probably not true. A similar issue comes up with the question: "How long have you been looking?" The author suggests saying a short period of time, even if it has been long. I think a better and more honest answer would be to describe how long you have been looking for the specific position you are interviewing for, and explain why it may have been a while. For example, you may be very choosy, or perhaps there are few positions of the sort you really want. That would make a person more credible to me as an interviewer.The advice is very good in one sense -- it places equal emphasis on good answers and on bad ones. So you will know what can hurt you. You will also learn about the different types of interviews, and what can help and hurt you in each one. I found almost every question that I have ever used as an interviewer over the last 30 years i