HR's Top 8 Time Bombs and How To Diffuse Them!

Where do you see yourself in five years? Hopefully not on a job hunt. In the meantime, an HR veteran has a guide for when those upcoming interviews take a tricky turn.

- Harry Ferguson

When it comes to job finding, interviews are almost unavoidable. Yet for many of us, they are frequently dreadful. Despite people’s well-intended advice, is it really possible not to take the interview process personally? This is, after all, your career being dissected by complete strangers. So the stock advice of “don’t worry” really can be a little trite. Having experienced the process myself fairly recently, and now that I’m in the position of writing about careers – and conducting a few interviews myself – my advice is slightly different. Do worry, but just try to worry more productively.

But When It Gets Tricky…

Job interviews at round one are about “weeding out” those who won’t make the cut for meeting those “higher up”. They’ll throw you a few weird questions or put you in oddball situations to see how you react – they think they can catch you out. So while you can prepare for a “normal” interview (see sidebar), let’s discuss what you should say when HR lobs you those tricky bombs.

1. “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”

This is inane. They know it, you know it. But you know what? The key is to avoid getting testy or sarcastic: This came straight out of the trusty HR interview handbook, and it very possibly doesn’t do humour. Instead, hook it back to what you know, to safe territory:

“Willow, because I’m a cricket fan.”

“Rattan, because I’m super disciplined.”

2. “Have you ever stolen anything from work?”

There is only one answer to this, and it’s not “yes”.