Speaker A
okay the title of this video says it all we are talking about answering the top 10 most common interview questions so grab pen and paper take some notes let's get into it before number one if we haven't met my name is Cassandra I'm a
Career strategist Cassandra Thompson walks through answering the top 10 common job interview questions, including 'tell me about yourself', behavioral STAR answers, weaknesses, and leaving a job.
Key Takeaways
- Structure answers with clear frameworks like STAR and keep them concise
- Always end answers with a concrete result or a positive forward-looking statement
- Research the company thoroughly and link your values to theirs
- Frame weaknesses and reasons for leaving positively and honestly
- Prepare thoughtful questions to ask the interviewer
What the video covers
- Introduces the video as a guide to answering the top 10 most common job interview questions
- 'Tell me about yourself': keep it to 1-3 minutes, professional only, highlight relevant roles, and end by saying you're excited to be in the room
- Behavioral questions ('tell me about a time when'): use the STAR method (Situation/Task, Action, Result), and always include a clear measurable result
- 'What is your greatest weakness': never use a disguised strength; choose a real weakness not core to the job and explain how you are working on it
- 'Why are you interested in our company': research the company's mission, vision and values and connect them to your own passion
- 'Why are you leaving your current position': stay brief and positive, focusing on growth and new challenges, and avoid discussing toxicity
- 'Long-term career goals / where you see yourself in five years': keep the answer broad and aligned with the company's growth
- Questions about teamwork and collaboration: describe your specific role and how you communicated and fostered an environment of collaboration
- Adaptability questions: think of examples where you changed course quickly and highlight flexibility
- Closing advice: prepare three to four genuine questions to ask the interviewer
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Setup
- 00:57Question 1: Tell Me About Yourself
- 02:53Question 2: Behavioral Questions and the STAR Method
- 04:01Question 3: What Is Your Greatest Weakness?
- 04:56Question 4: Why Are You Interested in Our Company?
- 06:01Question 5: Why Are You Leaving Your Current Position?
- 07:00Question 6: Long-Term Career Goals
- 08:00Teamwork and Collaboration Questions
- 10:59Adaptability and Closing Questions
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
career strategist and speaker and I help people go from hating work to happy work so let's get your interview answers tight starting with that most common question you will be asked tell me about yourself okay this is one of those where
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people can ramble ramble ramble so practice this one at home take some notes for yourself like go through it but essentially this is a brief overview of who you are keep this one to three minutes long tops my old video has
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different advice my very old video has different advice but it's revised now one to three minutes tops highlighting things you've done before titles you've had and one key thing from that job that ties to the current position okay so
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really brief overview of you professionally that's an important note to say not oh I love long walks on the beach and my favorite coffee at Starbucks is a cold brew iced whatever cold brew is iced always that was
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redundant sorry none of the personal stuff though let's take a sip of coffee none of the personal it's an about yourself so again highlight one thing from each of the core are positions that relate to this job and then always end
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on why you're in the room today people have a really hard time ending this question they think like I I hey I do interview coaching and I watch people stumble over this they're like yeah and yeah they don't know how to end it so
Speaker A
that's how you end it is ending with wire in the room today so you're gonna say all your things about what you've done before what you're currently doing and then how this is the next step and I'm very excited to speak with you all
Speaker A
today because I believe I'm a great fit for the blah blah blah role or I believe this role is the next step in my career journey and I'm very excited to talk about it like great end on while you're in the room okay the second most common
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question is actually a catch-all of all the most common questions which are behavioral questions these are the ones that start with tell me about a time when now I have a bunch of other videos going deeper on this but essentially you
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want to answer this with what's known as the star method there are variations on this there's the car method Etc but essentially you want to answer by giving the situation the task the action and the result so situation and task often
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go together sometimes I do like to think about this instead as the context so give me the context what do I need to know before you tell me the action you took so who was there what was the goal that was set what company was this it
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what role were you in what were you tasked with doing and then you give the action here is what I did here is how we worked through blah blah blah blah blah but you give your action and then you want to end on the result what happened
Speaker A
as a result of that action you took so people can sometimes get lost on this one they start only talking about themselves a lot of time the result is how others responded to your action or the end game of what happened with that
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project you know did you increase sales did you increase efficiency what was the end result don't leave that off the money is in that result all right question three what's your greatest weakness okay I kind of can't believe
Speaker A
this question is still being asked but from what I'm hearing it is still being asked in certain positions a lot of entry-level positions sometimes too just if you're new to a company they'll ask this one here's what you don't want to
Speaker A
do you never want to use a strength as a weakness so you're never going to be like oh I am such a perfectionist like we all see through that now what you want to do with this one and it takes some finessing is give an actual
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weakness but one that is not directly related to the core skills of this position so for example if it's a job in sales and you have to be okay okay with Outreach and meeting new people you're not going to say that your weakness is
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that you're shy a little too close to being the antithesis of what this position needs but what you can do is share something that's not directly related to the position so the other thing is you want it to be an actual
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weakness I know I said that before but I want to hit it again an actual weakness so one of the weaknesses I give a lot is that I am highly opinionated I have an opinion on everything including which fast food restaurant to go to even
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though it doesn't really matter to me and so in meetings I can often be the first one to talk when I asked for ideas suggestions Etc because my brain is just firing on all cylinders of wanting to give my answer but I have learned that
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other people need more time to process or that if I'm constantly going first people can feel like they don't have room to have a voice so I've learned that while I have an opinion on everything not every opinion needs to be
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heard and I need to give others the space to speak first before I share my answer every time the keys to that were it was an actual weakness it probably isn't going to affect the actual work being done and then third hadn't talked about this part
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yet you show that you're working on it so I gave an example of here's how I'm working on this weakness so that's what you want to do real weakness not directly tied to the job show how you're working on it okay question number four
Speaker A
why are you interested in our company right like why Google why Amazon right you want to show actual passion for the company look up their mission their Vision their values and Link it to your own show that make sure you're using
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some sort of phrase from their mission from their five-step strategic plan something that says hey you put this in your plan and that really resonates with me because and give something that is authentic to you but it's also going to
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show that you actually care about their company because you went and researched all of that so so show that you've done your research connect your Mission Vision Values to theirs and talk about how your passion also aligns to the role
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briefly they're also probably going to say why are you interested in this position but for this one you do want to add a little bit about how why you want to do this role at this company and so talk about your own passion your own
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enthusiasm based off their mission and how you align together okay question five why are you considering leaving your current position or why did you leave your last position so the really key thing with this is nobody said this
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has to be a long answer I think people get really freaked out by this one I myself have been freaked out by this question and you start over explaining yourself so first tip with this one is remember no one said this has to be a
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long answer answer be confident in your answer stay silent that's it just stay silent let them move on to the next question now as for the actual answer itself you want to stay positive focus on how this position is a new challenge for you or
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how you would exhausted all your resources of what you could do promotion wise at that place and now you're ready to take this next step in your career this is the next challenge you're seeking new opportunity Etc or maybe not
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challenge growth right but something in that realm avoid toxicity you can totally be leaving a job for toxic reasons I have but we don't bring that up here remember they don't really know you yet so they don't know how much to
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trust what you're saying in that sense so you want to stay away from oh I loved what I did but my co-worker was toxic or my boss was a monster or whatever those reasons get put to the side so for this one Focus positive focus on why you're
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sitting in the room with them and keep it brief oh one other thing you can do with this one is Showcase how this new role would fill your career goals so I'm leaving that position because it did these things for me but now I saw this
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position come up and I'm so excited for it because and you talk about all the cool things you like about this new role and how you just really couldn't pass up that opportunity so technically you answer them but you also refocus them
Speaker A
okay this next one this is a bigger one with entry level people but what are your long-term career goals or where do you see yourself in the next five years you want to keep this one broad people get kind of freaked out by this and
Speaker A
think oh my gosh I have to say something super specific no uh when people are going in for entry-level jobs and they say something like well I'd hope in two years I'm a manager it's like okay so you don't have any realism for how this
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works so you want to stay Broad and you don't want to say anything that doesn't align to what this company does so a really simple answer is something revolving around I'm excited to learn what I can in this position and then I
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would hope that I can develop grow and be promoted within this department right you know if you have some certain goals in mind like like you're going for you're starting as a publicity assistant you hope to one day be a publicist you
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can say that you can say my long-term goal is to be a publicist so I would hope in my time here that I learn from the team and learn more of the skills I need to work my way into that role over time right so you can share some of it
Speaker A
but don't put strict timelines on that another common one that comes up is something around teamwork or collaboration so tell me a time you collaborated with stakeholders from other departments or you worked as a team something like that on these you do
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always want to use that star method and then you want to make sure you're not just highlighting yourself but you're highlighting the team and how you worked in it what role did you serve on the team so situation task is going to be
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the overall of what the team was assigned to do let me know who the players are in this case right was it people from different departments was it a team of six was it a team of 20 and then how did you divide things out what
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role did you serve the action would then be what role did you play not just on the team but on working with others show how you're collaborating how you're communicating how you're trying to Foster an environment that feels like
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everyone gets to be heard and seen in some way right and then don't forget give that result okay the next one is another sort of catch-all and it's those tell me about a time questions that are about a challenge a difficult situation
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a difficult person so tell me about a tell me about a time you had a challenging manager tell me about a time you worked with a challenging client or a difficult client Etc on these we always want to again give that situation and task what was the
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what was the situation at hand what's the context I need to know of why this situation was challenging or why the person was challenging so sometimes that gets missed people give the actual situation the task they don't give the
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why behind it why it was a challenge they think it's implied like oh we have this project and the deadline was next Tuesday and then they go straight into their action but like I don't know why that's hard so if you say oh we had this
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task we had to work on and the deadline was next Tuesday we only had five days and this is a challenge because normally a task like this is done over three weeks time and we had five days to get this accomplished oh okay now I know why
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it's a challenge so that's actually what people miss a lot is they don't explain why it's challenging they think it's implied but remember I haven't worked in your department I haven't done that role before tell me why it's a challenge so
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you're going to give that and then you're going to give the actions you took you're going to give the actions you took to remedy the situation or to diffuse the challenge diffuse the difficult client Etc what is the action
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you took but on this one the result is so important because people love to end this with like their action with like and then I went and talked to them and and we finished the project it's like well okay technically that's a result
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but do they hate you now are you now friends how did they respond to what you said or how did the rest of the team deal with the challenge of the project and and what was the result of you getting it in on time don't forget to
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give the result and the way the result was perceived by people other than than you okay the next common question at least it's becoming more common is having to give some sort of situation where you are adaptable or you're open
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to change so tell me about a time you had to change direction quickly on a project or tell me about a time you want to adapt to a situation adaptability is a huge success skill or soft skill depending on the company you're at and
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so you want to think through what are some situations where I had to adapt where I had to change course quickly and how did I do it so think through those ideas and key things are you want to highlight your flexibility how quickly
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did you turn the ability to stay organized and productive while making this change and your willingness to learn in this transition what did you learn from having to adapt what did you have to just get on board with even
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though you weren't sure and what did you learn through that process make sure you're showing those components in your answer and then number 10 how you prepared to answer when the interviewer says those are all of my questions what
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questions do you have for me key number one is you have to have questions you never want to say you know I'm pretty good I I don't think I have any questions for you you always have questions now I go over this in detail
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in many other videos one that I'll link here in the description box below but key things are I would always have three to four questions ready make them genuine questions you have about the position and I would make sure they're
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in a couple of different categories one success focused like if you got the role you'd how would you be successful in it one learning more about the company culture the day-to-day structure what a day looks like what a week looks like
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Etc how the department works together something around that and then a question around maybe their working style their management style anything in that area is good and then I do love that question about hesitancy if you want to know what that is go check out the other video we're not going to do it
Speaker A
here now if you need more help I have first off like hundreds of videos on interviewing on this channel you can catch a lot of those in the playlist here if you want to catch that questions to ask at the end of an interview I got
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that here and then I also have a free interview prep checklist it's everything you need to kind of get arranged and prepped for your next interview you can grab it in the description box below and I'll see you in the next one bye
Topics:job interviewinterview questionsSTAR methodcareer adviceinterview tipsbehavioral interviewtell me about yourselfgreatest weaknesscareer strategyjob search
