If you could have any job, what kind of job would you like to do?
It threw me off. The question struck me as out of place and disrupting the course the interview had had up to this point. Had I made a huge miscalculation? I was fairly sure I was doing a decent job giving appropriate answers. This question made my confidence waver. Did the interviewers deem me more suitable for a different kind of job? Or was this a test? For a moment, all kind of what-ifs crossed my mind and I was clueless on how to continue.
Brain Freeze
The moment stress takes over the brain shuts down entirely. You will try harder to think, but without any result. The only unwanted result is silence. Interviews do not easily recover from such silences. No matter how difficult it is, stay calm and do not let the stress and the fear of failing take over. Panic may tempt you to give an answer and to ramble on about it. Making a wrong answer even worse. Instead, accept that you do not know the answer and that is okay. It happens to all of us.
With panic and stress on hold. It is necessary to reboot your brain to get it going again. The good news is that you do not have to do this by yourself. An interview is a two-way conversation; interviewees are free to partake in the questioning too. When confronted with a difficult question that makes your mind go blank, ask the interviewer to repeat the question.
Paraphrase the question, to see if you have understood the question correctly. The brain is triggered to work on the matter in a different way that is part of the rebooting. Confirm with the interviewer you understood the question correctly.
By making the brain work on it from a different approach, you have time to think about the answer.
Unfortunately, this does not always help. Let the interviewer know that you need to think about this for a moment longer. While thinking it is okay to make notes, draw diagrams or visualize it in a different way. Also, asking further questions about the problem the interviewer presented to you can help you in forming the answer. Showing the process you take is sometimes enough of an answer to the interviewers than the actual answer.
Odd Questions
This is often the case with odd questions, like how many balloons would fit in this room? or Are you a dog or a cat person? The reason why employers ask such questions differs. In some cases, it is to find out how you would approach a problem; questions will tell the interviewers something about the interviewee’s personality. Often, they just want to see how the candidate reacts to the unexpected question that they could not have prepared for. When you cannot decipher what the purpose of the question is, it is fine to ask this.
Crash
When your brain has properly crashed and rebooting it does not help, express this to the interviewer. Let him or her know what is happening to you. After all, it is unlikely their intent is to ruin your chances. If they had set out to do so, they would not have bothered inviting you for an interview in the first place.
Dream Job
In the end, I repeated the question about my dream job, to verify I had understood correctly. Giving me some time to think how I was going to describe how I had already worked on it for about a year. It turned out to be the most interesting question of the entire interview. Both interviewers showed sincere interest, admitting that the question turned out to be less unexpected than that I had at first thought. They had already read about it on my LinkedIn profile, and had used the question to get me started on it.
Cecile Koster
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