How to answer the interviewer's "hobby" question

Although the interview process is tense, some interviewers have a good grasp of the rhythm. After a series of challenging questions, sometimes he will ask you-"What are your hobbies?" At this time, the interviewer often looks relaxed and even smiles. If you think he is trying to adjust the atmosphere, or to show his amiable side, you have only guessed part of it.

By asking this question, the interviewer mainly wants to examine you in the following four aspects.

Questioning Mystery 1: Assess your sense of presence

Interviewers' time is precious, and they generally don't have the opportunity to ask you questions without goal orientation. When faced with the seemingly soft question "What are your hobbies", many people think that the interviewer and himself are going to chat. In fact, when you enter the interview enterprise, always remind yourself: I am here for an interview today. This is the sense of presence. Just like after this company hires you next, you enter the company every day, and you come to work. People with a strong sense of the scene rarely do things unrelated to work when they should be working. If you start chatting with the interviewer, do you think they will choose you in the end?

Questioning mystery 2: Assessing job relevance

Most people have their own hobbies. In the eyes of enterprises and interviewers, if your hobby is positively related to the position you are applying for, they will be interested, and your answer will probably add points to your interview. On the contrary, you may enter the list of eliminated people early. For example, if the interviewer wants to recruit a marketing director, if the candidate likes stylistics and even reaches the level of expertise, the interviewer will judge that he will have a strong affinity when he is in contact with customers, and his stylistic talent will become a tool for this person to interact with customers, making it easier for him to communicate and coordinate with customers. Interviewers will be willing to give extra points to such candidates.

Questioning Mystery 3: Assessing Cultural Matching

Corporate culture is the second air in your workplace. If you are accepted, can you survive in this air? The interviewer is more anxious than you to know the answer to this question. How did he get the answer? Knowing your hobbies is a good way.

Corporate culture can be divided into three categories: capitalist culture, military culture and scientist culture. The enterprise you interviewed belongs to capitalist culture, and wolf is one of its core cultures. And you know this before the interview. When talking about the topic of "hobby", you can talk to the interviewer about your favorite basketball game and explain that your hobby is to cultivate teamwork spirit, and it is also a sport that emphasizes winning by attacking. Nowadays, one kind of basketball game is "three against three", and the confrontation is fierce. People have called it "street bullfighting". I believe you will get good feedback from the interviewer in a few words like this. Of course, you can also introduce yourself to listening to light music, which doesn't sound to conflict with the wolf culture. But suppose there are two candidates in this interview, and others choose the first answer, you will undoubtedly fall behind.

Questioning mystery 4: Assessing the degree of focus

Some people have many hobbies, such as listening to music, playing chess, delicious food, traveling, watching movies, playing badminton and so on. Hobbies widely show that you are a person who loves life, but it is often inappropriate for you to show them to the interviewer during the interview. You are here for an interview, not to show how colorful your life is. If you introduce more than ten hobbies to the interviewer in one breath, the interviewer will be introduced into the maze of your life, and it will be impossible to judge the matching degree between you and the job and the corporate culture.

So, you should make a selective statement about your hobbies. How to choose? If you already know the ability requirements of the job and the cultural style of this enterprise in advance, then focus on the ability model and cultural style of this position. Some people will say: competency model and cultural style involve a lot of content! Then you have to learn to focus on the core. For example, you are applying for the position of Chief Strategy Officer, and your hobbies include Go, music, food, etc. I suggest you give up the introduction of music and food, and take Go as an example to show how you have thought about the layout, so focus your hobbies on the core competence of Chief Strategy Officer, and the interviewer who loves talents will not let you go easily.

Generally speaking, it is enough for the interviewer to focus on the job competency model and cultural style with one or two hobbies without asking questions.

Answer Secret 1: Be true and reliable

With a sense of presence and focus, you have the basic idea of answering the topic of "hobby". However, some people love to use their brains when focusing, to "create" hobbies to cater to the interviewer, and often accidentally slip into the trap.

I really can't fake it. I really can't fake it. When you begin to introduce your hobby, you should think that the interviewer will ask in depth about this specific hobby. For example, an applicant is interviewed by a marketing director. This position requires frequent business trips, and the company requires a little higher physical conditions. The applicant said that he was a great basketball player since he was a child (actually, he was an amateur). He insisted that he had participated in the municipal professional team competition and won a good ranking. As a result, the interviewer became interested and asked him which team won the championship and runner-up in that competition. He couldn't answer any of them. The interviewer still saved his face, and finally said a sentence: professional athletes are easy to leave old injuries. I'm afraid it will take you a long time to get to this position!

don't try to challenge the interviewer's IQ in judging whether hobbies are true or false. As long as it's a fake hobby, a high-level interviewer will definitely let you find the conflict of logic.

answer secret 2: fashion is not necessarily good

modern people are very popular in "circle" socialization, and hobbies are an important factor in bringing "circle" together. In particular, some fashionable and elegant hobbies can not only enhance the adhesion between friends, but also enhance self-awareness of value. However, if such hobbies are introduced in an interview, are they all appropriate?

For example, in an interview, the applicant told the interviewer that he liked Italian opera very much, and the interviewer was excited when he heard it. Oh, it's hard to meet people with such elegant hobbies, so he went on talking. It turns out that this applicant is a musical family, and his personal voice condition is excellent. His family always has professional PK several times a year, and he always wins the championship. The interviewer was relieved: this is a hobby formed by family reasons and limited to family display. What an atmosphere it would be if there were such "quasi-three high" singers to sing songs at the company's annual meeting! The interviewer gave him extra points.

The next applicant told the interviewer that his hobby was playing golf, and the interviewer also became interested and began to ask: Where do you play golf? How often do you play with your golfers? The applicant replied "every weekend", and the golf course he went to was still an expensive local venue. The interviewer asked again: was it invited by a friend or at his own expense? The applicant replied: Both. This kind of question and answer makes it easy for careful interviewers to draw several conclusions: this professional manager is extravagant enough; It doesn't matter if you invite customers. If customers often invite professional managers, it's hard to say the question of professional ethics ...

They are also fashionable and elegant hobbies. See how different the interviewer's reaction is!

answer secret 3: avoid being too dangerous and too idle

people have various hobbies, and with the development of social economy, people's hobbies in playing are more abundant. In an interview, an applicant and the interviewer talked about their hobby of adventure with great interest: we donkey friends go out every weekend, and we go anywhere in the wild, and no one has been to the best place. After visiting such a place, we have a special sense of accomplishment. When we come back, we will post a post on the Internet to let the donkey friends who have never been there share the joy. Such hobbies are not used by ordinary enterprises except to show the good physical quality of candidates.

why? Enterprises not only have operational risks, but as social citizens, they also have to bear all kinds of risks brought by employees at any time. All kinds of high-risk activities, such as racing, hiking and gliding, are dangerous at any time and place. Enterprises employ such people, and once there is a situation, even during non-operating hours, enterprises should arrange resources to solve it. If they don't invest resources to solve it, they will lose their basic humanity! Without shame, the company will have to mess around for a while and suffer heavy losses inside and outside!

A hobby that is too risky is an extreme, and there is another hobby that is too idle. Some professional managers who have grown up in the city love to keep pets, such as keeping birds and fighting cricket. This hobby can be used as a "personal collector's edition", but it would be naive to share it with the interviewer in the interview and even expect it to bring you an offer. The interviewer will directly label you as "sensual dog and horse", and the lightest thing is that this person is "no fighting spirit"! Once an international professional manager mentioned his hobby of raising birds and cricket in an interview. When he was hired, the judges had different opinions, but he was eager to use people and there was no other alternative candidate. Finally, the enterprise decided to hire him. Unexpectedly, a year later, the international professional manager was in trouble when he left his job. He said that the cricket he raised could not adapt to the climate in the north of China, and he was too busy to take care of it. Now that he died, the company had to compensate 5 million yuan and took out the purchase of it. We couldn't reach an agreement, and finally we went to arbitration, which didn't support it, and then we went to court, which didn't support it. However, the company has been tossing for half a year, and it is not annoying! Therefore, international managers should pay more attention to cultural differences, not to mention hobbies that are too idle. Never make a lover of Tibetan mastiffs, which is even more shocking.

Therefore, employers and interviewers can't avoid candidates who are too risky and too idle. What about hiring?

Answer 4: Explain the background of hobbies

For enterprises, many hobbies of employees may become potential costs, and some even conflict with the competency model of positions and corporate culture. As a candidate, how to resolve the tangible or intangible conflict between your hobbies and enterprises?

it's a good idea to briefly explain the formation period of your hobbies to the interviewer. For example, you tell the interviewer that you have a hobby of playing Go, but the interviewer may think: There are so many games on the Internet now, will he go for fun during office hours? If you take the initiative to introduce yourself, this hobby was developed during your college years. At that time, the courses were not too tense, and you began to learn as a way to strengthen your self-accomplishment. Now I only play games with my friends on weekends. When I am nervous at work, I don't even play on weekends. What you said immediately showed your position, indicating that you have a clear subjective and objective understanding of your work and hobbies.

explain clearly the formation period of hobbies, even if hobbies conflict with enterprises, they may be turned into invisibility by you.

secret 5: don't belittle other people's hobbies

when talking about "hobbies" in front of the interviewer, it is forbidden to praise your hobbies and belittle the interests outside your hobbies. For example, in an interview, the applicant and the interviewer said: I like karaoke very much, especially I don't like dancing, and I feel that it is easy to form an ambiguous relationship in the process of dancing; I like mountaineering very much. I feel very heroic when I reach the top of the mountain, but swimming is not good. I have to stretch my arms and kick when I get into the water. I feel tired before I swim 5 meters, which makes people feel frustrated!

Such candidates give the interviewer the impression that they are too aggressive, intolerant and shoot at random. Don't you know that all walks of life have their own doorways, and hobbies are also a profession. If you don't like them, it may be because you are not professional. In addition, what if the interviewer happens to have a hobby that is belittled by the candidate? What if the boss of an enterprise happens to have a degraded hobby?

pay attention to your hobbies, and ignore other rocks.

secret 6: hobbies should not become hobbies

if you go too far, you should have a moderate hobby. When talking about "hobbies" with the interviewer, remember that it is appropriate to talk about moderation and not to talk about hobbies as hobbies. For example, to apply for that position of vice president of public relation, you can introduce your favorite red wine to the interviewer, talk about the characteristic of French red wine, Australian red wine, American red wine and even South American red wine, and even expose one or two typical misunderstandings in red wine culture. But you can't say that you can't stop drinking every day. You wake up from bed thinking about drinking every day, so the interviewer directly thinks you are a wine putty. Even boasted that one person knocked down several people at a time, drank two pounds or three pounds, and finally slept for two days, or went to the hospital to sober up. Isn't this a wine madman?

hobbies and hobbies, a word difference, hell and earth! ;