Today we’re discussing the most important question you’ll face in an interview and the four most important points to consider when answering it.
What’s the most important interview question?
You may be familiar with Jack Welch, the famous CEO of General Electric, a $100 billion company. Welch was known for building great teams. When he was asked what the most important interview question is, he was stumped at first. After he thought about it, the answer he came back with was that the most important interview question is, “Why are you looking to leave your current job and why did you leave your past jobs?”
Knowing that, let me give you some advice on how to answer this question.
For starters, you never want to talk poorly about a past hiring manager or employer because 99% of the time, the person you’re interviewing with will side with the past hiring manager and think you were the reason for the conflict.
Second, you don’t want to give a long and drawn-out answer. When a hiring manager gets a long answer to this question, all they hear is problems, and they’ll think you’re at the center of the problems. That means if they hire you, they’re hiring problems.
The third thing to consider is that when you give reasons why you left your last job, make sure they aren’t reasons for this company not to hire you.
Finally, knowing that you’ll be asked this question in every interview, doesn’t it make sense to script the answer? Write out the answer to this questions and refine it. It should not only be honest, it should also be clean and concise, and you can do that in advance.
Here at JDI, we’ve helped thousands of people with this question. If we can ever help you out with this or anything else, don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We’d love to help you out.