“Briefly tell me about yourself” – this is probably one of the most common interview questions, where you’re most likely to get off to a great start or put yourself out of the race immediately. Neither your personal feelings, nor what you did at the weekend are of interest here. The more focused you can be in explaining why you applied and why you are the best candidate, the better you will start the interview.

In most cases, the interview will then reference stages of your CV and ask about previous jobs and experience. It’s important to be well prepared here, and to be able to give concrete examples. The aim of this part of the interview is to find out whether you are suitable for the advertised profile. Therefore, you should know this well and refer to it when possible.

After the professional examination, there is a check to see whether you will culturally fit into the company. Questions regarding your behaviour are usually asked:

“Imagine a colleague tells you off the record about incidents that require urgent clarification from her supervisor. What would you do?”

This category also includes the much-dreaded questions about weaknesses, mistakes or failures, or about behaviour in the event of severe disagreements or opposition.

It’s important to know here that the content is never relevant. Rather, your counterpart would like to know how you deal with such challenges. It’s best to select examples and prepare a response strategy.