5 Questions You'll Hear At Your Next Job Interview - And Exactly How To Answer Them

Land your next gig by preparing for these specific conversations.

- Kristen Bahler

LOOK, THERE’S NO WAY around this: Job hunting is the worst.

It’s stressful and time-consuming. Success hinges on a million different variables, each muddied by competing advice from anyone who feels emboldened to dish it out.

In the hours before a job interview, all of this comes barreling to a climax. Often, the more you rehearse your work history, the more you Google potential interview questions, the more you labor over how to charm your interviewer, the further from an offer letter you feel.

So here’s a tip … Stop doing that.

Obviously, you want to be prepared for an interview. But instead of going over every esoteric question a recruiter might ask, why not home in on the few you know they will? Learning how to mold the points you want to make around different types of questions will better prepare you for the task at hand, says Mary Abbajay, president of Careerstone Group and author of Managing Up.

“There are only about 10 different questions, but 100 different ways of asking,” she says.

Here are the questions that will inevitably come up in your next interview, and how Abbajay and other career experts say you should answer them.

“Tell me about yourself”

This question, usually an interviewer’s first, isn’t as easy as it seems.

It’s not enough to just “give the employer a rundown of your résumé,” says Ashley Hampton, a psychologist and business coach. “And they definitely do not want to hear about your personal life.”