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5 types of job interviews

We all know how stressful a job interview can be - whether it's your first time, or the hundredth one you're attending.

So, to help you through the process, we've come up with a list of different interview types that you may encounter.

Depending on the level of the role you are interviewing for and the types of requirements needed for a particular role, these are some interviews you may experience.

Phone Interviews

Employers are starting the interview process more and more these days with a phone interview even prior to the face-to-face interview.

Time considerations and travel costs have all lead to an increase in the number of phone interviews being conducted in the earliest stages and even into later stages if there are important stake holders that are not located in the same geography as the candidate.

Completing a successful interview is critical to moving to the 2nd phase of the interview so it should be approached with fervor and preparation.

Phone interviews are often pre-scheduled allowing you to prepare properly. However, sometimes they are often just spontaneous as a hiring manager may just pick up the phone in an effort to catch you off guard or just because they are excited about your background and want to catch up with you as soon as possible.

Click here to find out how to ace a phone interview.


Traditional or Standard Interviews

Traditional interviews are what most of us are accustomed to. They typical interview revolves around the interviewer asking basic questions such as:

“Tell me about yourself?”
“Why are you looking for a new role?”
“Tell me why I should hire you?”

This type of interview follows a basic format and is often a very generic and canned interaction between the candidate and the hiring manager. The interviewer typically will just read the steps of your resume and ask relevant questions.

Click here to become a pro at traditional or standard interviews.


Behavioral Interviews

Interviewers are becoming more highly skilled and often trained in conducting behavioral interviews which will help them predict future success and cohesiveness in their organization based on your past results and experiences.

Typically, the hiring manager or team will have identified a set of key indicators or core competencies they feel are needed for the successful candidate to be hired.

They may even employ technology based assessment tests to support their findings.

Behavioral interviews include:


• Open Ended Questions. For example, “Give me an example of a time when ________” or “Tell me about a situation you handled where you ______”
• Follow Up and Probing Questions. For example, “In the project you describe, how did you manage to increase sales revenue?”

Click here to skill yourself up in the behavioral interview.

Case Interviews


Case interviews are typically used for legal, investment/financial, medical or consulting type roles. In a case interview, the interviewer will present a real or hypothetical business problem, and ask you to analyze the situation and present how you might go about solving it.

The interviewer is usually trying to assess your critical thinking skills and general business knowledge. Normally, you’re not given enough information prior to the interview to prepare a response in advance.

This type of interview not only will test your knowledge and business acumen, but also how quickly and effectively you think on your feet.

They are also looking to evaluate the kinds of questions you ask about the business problem in order to effectively provide a solution. This will test your analytical skills. In a case interview, there really is no perfect answer.

You’re going to be judged more on how you approach the problem than on the specific solutions you come up with.

Click here to see how you can be better at case interviews.


Stress Interviews

Most candidates may never experience a specific “stress” interview; they may feel all interviews are stressful. But a true “Stress” interview is designed to deliberately create a stressful and even hostile environment for the candidate and to evaluate how they cope. The interviewer may ask questions that seem to have no bearing on the role or to even create an emotional response from the candidate.

They may perform actions that purposefully will set the candidate off and to evaluate how they compensate for that.

Stress Interview Tactics May Include:

• Asking off-the-wall or even absurd questions like “If you were a color, which one would you be?” or “What kind of super hero power would you like to have?”

• Making the candidate wait for extended periods of time before bringing them in.

• Having multiple people fire questions one after the other at the candidate without time for a real response.

• The interviewer may respond with indifference, rudeness, cockiness or the silent treatment.

Click here to ace any stress interview.



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