Credit Card Officer

As I'm sure you know, "because I'm great" or "I really need a job" are not good answers here. This is a time to give the employer a laundry list of your greatest talents that just so happen to match the job description. It's also good to avoid taking potshots at other potential candidates here. Focus on yourself and your talents, not other people's flaws.

This is a great “deer in the headlights look” question, as most people simply don’t have an answer. The best way to handle this question is simply to always spend some time working on your skills in whatever way you can. Write open source code. Participate in Toastmasters. Take a class. If you put effort into improving yourself every year, you’ll not only have a strong resume, but this question will be a non-issue.

Although it’s fine to list a technical skill or two here, particularly if your job is very technical, it’s very important to mention some non-technical things. “I learned how to work in a team environment after mostly working in solo environments” is a good one, for example. There should be no job where you learned nothing, and the interviewer is expecting that you learned at least a few things at your previous employment that will help at your current one.

It's important here to focus on the word "implemented." There's nothing wrong with having a thousand great ideas, but if the only place they live is on your notepad what's the point? Better still, you need a good ending. If your previous company took your advice and ended up going bankrupt, that's not such a great example either. Be prepared with a story about an idea of yours that was taken from idea to implementation, and considered successful.

This is a “homework” question, too, but it also gives some clues as to the perspective the person brings to the table. The best preparation you can do is to read the job description and repeat it to yourself in your own words so that you can do this smoothly at the interview.

I'd be very surprised if you haven't been asked this one at every interview. It's probably the most asked question because it sets the stage for the interview and it gets you talking. Be careful not to give the interviewer your life story here. You don't need to explain everything from birth to present day. Relevant facts about education, your career and your current life situation are fine.

Obviously, it’s great if you can answer “no,” but it’s usually not a deal breaker if the answer is “yes.” In fact, a “yes” answer can be turned into a positive – it’s a great way to show that you’ve made mistakes and learned valuable lessons from them. Be honest here, no matter what, but don’t spend time bashing the people that let you go. Only discuss them with respect, even if you’re angry about what happened.

Hopefully if you're applying for this position you have bags of related experience, and if that's the case you should mention it all. But if you're switching careers or trying something a little different, your experience may initially not look like it's matching up. That's when you need a little honest creativity to match the experiences required with the ones you have. People skills are people skills after all, you just need to show how customer service skills can apply to internal management positions, and so on.

This question mostly looks for honesty and for the realization that most conflicts have two sides to a story. It also opens the door for people with poor character to start bashing their previous employer, something which leaves a bad taste in most interviewers’ mouths. The best way to answer usually involves telling the story, but showing within it that there are two sides to that story and that you’ve learned from the experience to try to see the other person’s perspective.

You should definitely have a good, solid answer ready for this question, since the debt-to-equity (D/E) ratio is a key, if not the primary, financial ratio considered in evaluating a company's ability to handle its debt financing obligations. The D/E ratio indicates a company’s total debt in relation to its total equity, and it reveals what percentage of a company's financing is being provided by debt and what percentage by equity. Your answer should show you understand the ratio and know that, generally speaking, ratios lower than 1.0 indicate a more financially sound firm, while ratios higher than 1.0 indicate an increasing level of credit risk.

This is a question that is mostly looking to see if you have empathy for others. Take it dead seriously when answering – it should not have been an easy choice or an easy experience, but one that you handled and survived. Do not bash the person you fired, either – be as clinical as possible with the reasons.

This is an honesty question. I’m looking for “yes,” but people who are trying too hard to feed me a line of nonsense answer “no.” The best way to answer is to say “Yes, in much the same way that you’re interviewing other people. We’re both trying to find the best fit for what we need and what we want.” If your answer is truly no, then say so – “No, I’m actually happy with my current position, but there were a few compelling aspects of this job that made me want to follow up on it” and list those aspects.

It's not a very fair question is it? We'd all love to get paid a Trump-like salary doing a job we love but that's rare indeed. It's fine to say money is important, but remember that NOTHING is more important to you than the job. Otherwise, you're just someone looking for a bigger paycheck.

The answer is usually already known to the interviewer based on the resume, but this is a chance for you to really sell yourself. Most interviewers will usually sit back and see how well you can sell. On occasion, surprises can be good here, but this can be tricky – if it’s something that should have been on your resume, why was it not on your resume? You’re better off knowing what the cream of the crop of your resume is and just listing it out.

This is a great late question because it tells you whether the person is a long-term thinker or not. People that plan for the long term are usually in a good, mature mental state and will often wind up being stronger workers than people without long-term plans.

This could include anything from night classes to hobbies and sports. If it's related, it's worth mentioning. Obviously anything to do with further education is great, but maybe you're spending time on a home improvement project to work on skills such as self-sufficiency, time management and motivation.

Mostly, this is looking for conviction of character. A strong, concrete answer of any reasonable sort is good here. “I wanted to move on” is not a strong answer. Downsizing is a good answer, as is a desire to seek specific new challenges (but be specific on what challenges you want to face). Minimize your actual discussion of your previous position here, as you’ll be very close to a big opportunity to start bashing your previous position.

This is actually something of a trick question, because it’s just a way of re-asking the second question (what you know about the company) and the fourth (what you know about the position). It’s asked because it tells whether people give flippant answers to questions (things like “because I’m a people person”) or whether they think about things and give a genuine question. This is a good question to formulate an answer for in advance – basically, just come up with a few things that seem intriguing to you about the company and the position and reasons why they interest you.