How to answer the interviewer's "hobby" question

How to answer the interviewer's "hobby" question

Although the interview process is tense, some interviewers are very good at controlling the rhythm. After a series of challenging questions, sometimes he will ask you - "What are your usual hobbies?" At this time, the interviewer often looks relaxed and even smiles. If you think he's trying to lighten the mood or show off his affable side, you're only partly right.

By asking this question, the interviewer mainly wants to test the following four aspects of you.

Question 1: Test your sense of presence

The interviewer’s time is precious, and they generally do not have the opportunity to ask you questions that are not targeted. When many people face the seemingly soft question "What are your hobbies?" they think that the interviewer and themselves are ready to chat. In fact, when you enter a company for an interview, you should always remind yourself: I am here for an interview today. This is the sense of place. Just like after this company hires you, when you enter the company every day, you come to work. People with a strong sense of presence rarely do things unrelated to work during the hours they should be working. If you start chatting with the interviewer about this, think about whether they will choose you in the end?

Question 2: Assess job relevance

Most people have their own hobbies. In the eyes of the company and the interviewer, if your hobbies and the position you are applying for are positively related in some aspects, they will be interested, and your answers may add points to your interview. On the other hand, you may end up on the elimination list early. For example, if the interviewer is recruiting a marketing director, if the candidate is interested in culture and sports, and even reaches a level of expertise, the interviewer will judge that when contacting customers, he will have a strong affinity, and his cultural and sports talents will become the key to this person's interaction with customers. Tools make it easier to communicate and coordinate with customers. Interviewers will be willing to give points to such candidates.

Question 3: Assessment of cultural fit

Corporate culture is the second atmosphere in your workplace. If you are admitted, can you survive in this atmosphere? ? The interviewer is more anxious to know the answer to this question than you are. How does he arrive at the answer? Understanding your hobbies is a good way to do this.

There are roughly three major categories of corporate culture: capitalist culture, military culture and scientist culture. The company you are interviewing for belongs to a capitalist culture, and wolfishness is one of its core cultures. And you learned 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 also emphasizes winning by offense. movement. Nowadays, there is a kind of basketball game called "three-on-three". The confrontation is so fierce that people have called it "street bullfighting". I believe that your few words will definitely get good feedback from the interviewer. Of course, you can also introduce that you like to listen to light music, which does not sound like it conflicts with the wolf culture. But if there are two candidates for this interview, and someone else chooses the first answer, you will undoubtedly be at a disadvantage.

Question 4: Assessment focus

Some people have many hobbies, such as listening to music, playing chess, food, traveling, watching movies, playing badminton, etc. Having a wide range of hobbies shows that you are a person who loves life, but it is often inappropriate for you to show these to the interviewer during the interview process. You are here for the interview, not to show how colorful your life is. If you introduce more than a dozen of your hobbies to the interviewer in one breath, the interviewer will be led into the maze of your life, and it will be impossible to judge your compatibility with the position you are applying for and the corporate culture.

So, you have to state your hobbies selectively. How to choose? If you already know the competency requirements of the position you are applying for and the cultural style of the company in advance, then make a focused statement around the competency model and cultural style of the position. Some people will say: There is a lot involved in capability models and cultural styles! Then you have to learn to focus on the core.

For example, if you are applying for the position of chief strategy officer, and your hobbies include Go, music, food, etc., it is recommended that you give up the introduction of music and food, and use Go as an example to explain how you have thought about the layout. Here is If you focus on the core competencies of the Chief Strategy Officer, a talented interviewer will not let you go easily.

Generally speaking, it is enough for the interviewer not to ask further questions, but to focus on the job competency model and cultural style with one or two hobbies.

Answer secret one: Be authentic and reliable

With a sense of presence and focus, you have the basic idea of ??answering the "hobby" topic. But there are also people who like to use their brains when focusing and "create" hobbies to please the interviewer, and often slip into the trap accidentally.

What is true cannot be false, and what is false cannot be true. When you start to introduce your hobbies, you should expect that the interviewer will ask in-depth questions about this specific hobby. For example: a candidate participates in an interview for a marketing director. This position requires frequent business trips, and the company has slightly higher physical requirements. This applicant said that he had been good at playing basketball since he was a child (actually, he was just an amateur). He said that he had participated in municipal professional team competitions and received good rankings. As a result, the interviewer became interested and asked him which team was the champion and runner-up in that competition, but he couldn't answer any of them. The interviewer managed to save face for him, and finally said: Professional athletes are prone to old injuries. I'm afraid it won't be enough for you in this position after a long time!

Don’t try to challenge the interviewer’s IQ in judging the authenticity of a hobby. As long as it is a fake hobby, a high-level interviewer will definitely let you discover the conflicts in logic.

Answer Mystery 2: Fashion may not be good

It is very popular among modern people to socialize in "circles", and hobbies are an important factor in bringing "circles" together. In particular, some hobbies that look fashionable and elegant can not only enhance the bonding between friends, but also enhance self-esteem. However, if such hobbies are introduced in an interview, are they appropriate?

For example: During an interview, the applicant introduced to the interviewer that he liked Italian opera very much. The interviewer was very excited when he heard it. Hehe, it is rare to meet people with such elegant hobbies, so he said: Keep talking. It turned out that this applicant came from a musical family and had a great voice. His family always had several professional-level PKs a year, and he always won the championship. The interviewer was relieved when he heard it: This is a hobby formed due to family reasons, and it is limited to family display. What an atmosphere it would be if there were such "quasi-three top" singers singing at the company's annual meeting! The interviewer gave him extra points.

The next applicant told the interviewer that his hobby was golf. The interviewer was also interested and began to ask: Where do you play golf? How often do you play with your golf buddies? The applicant answered "I go every weekend" and the golf course I went to was still very expensive in the local area. The interviewer asked again: Was it invited by a friend or at your own expense? Candidate answer: Both. Such questions and answers allow the attentive interviewer to easily draw several conclusions: This professional manager is luxurious enough; it doesn't matter if you hire a client. If clients often hire professional managers, it will be difficult to discuss the issue of professional ethics...

They are all fashionable and elegant hobbies. You can see the difference in the interviewer’s reaction!

Answer secret three: avoid being too risky and too leisurely

People have various hobbies, and with the development of social economy, people’s hobbies in play have become even richer. During an interview, an applicant talked enthusiastically to the interviewer about his hobby of adventure: A few of us travel friends go out every weekend, and we go hiking wherever there is in the wilderness. Well, I feel a sense of accomplishment after going to a place like this. When I come back, I will post a post online so that fellow travelers who have never been there can share their joy. In addition to showing the applicant's good physical fitness, this kind of hobby is not something that most companies dare to use.

Why? An enterprise not only has operational risks, but as a social citizen, it must also bear various risks brought by its employees at any time. Various high-risk activities, such as racing cars, traveling adventures, and gliding, can cause dangers anytime and anywhere. If a company hires such people, once a situation arises, even during non-business hours, the company must allocate resources to solve it. If it doesn't invest resources in solving it, wouldn't it mean that it has lost even its basic humanity! If we don’t lose our humanity, the company will be in chaos for a while and suffer heavy losses both internally and externally!

A hobby that is too risky is an extreme, and there is also a hobby that is too leisurely.

Some professional managers who grew up in the city like to keep pets, such as raising birds, fighting crickets, etc. Such hobbies can be regarded as "personal collections", but if you share them with the interviewer during an interview, you may even hope that they can be used as pets. It would be too naive to bring you a job offer. The interviewer will directly label you as a "sensual person", or at the very least, he has "no fighting spirit"! There was once an international professional manager who mentioned his hobby of raising birds and crickets during an interview. When he was hired, the judges had different opinions, but he was eager to hire and there were no other substitutes. In the end, the company decided to hire him. Unexpectedly, trouble arose when this international professional manager resigned a year later - he said that the crickets he raised could not adapt to the climate in northern China, and were too busy at work to take care of them. Now that the crickets are dead, the company has to take care of them. He paid 5 million yuan in compensation and took out bills for purchasing crickets and tools for raising crickets. We couldn't reach an agreement, so we finally took it to arbitration, but the arbitration didn't support it. Then we took it to court, and the court didn't support it either. However, the company has been struggling with this for more than half a year, and it’s not a worry! Therefore, international managers should pay more attention to cultural differences, and don't talk about hobbies that are too leisurely. Never find someone who likes to raise Tibetan Mastiffs, it will be even more outrageous.

Therefore, bosses and interviewers will avoid candidates who have too risky or too leisurely hobbies, so why hire them?

Answer secret 4: Explain the background of hobbies

For companies, many hobbies of employees may become potential costs, and some may even conflict with the job's ability model and corporate culture. . As a job applicant, how do you resolve the tangible or intangible conflicts between your hobbies and the company?

It’s a good idea to briefly explain to the interviewer the period when your hobby was formed. 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 play it during working hours? If you take the initiative to introduce it yourself, this hobby was developed when you were in college. At that time, the courses were not too intense, and you only started learning to strengthen your self-quality. Now I only play chess with friends on the weekends, and I don’t even play on the weekends when I’m busy at work. When you say this, you immediately express your position and show that you have a clear subjective and objective understanding of work and hobbies.

Explain clearly the period when the hobby was formed. Even if there is a conflict between the hobby and the enterprise, it may be invisible to you.

Answer secret five: Do not belittle other people's hobbies

When talking about "hobbies" in front of the interviewer, it is taboo to praise your own hobbies and belittle your interests other than your hobbies. For example: In an interview, the applicant said to the interviewer: I like karaoke very much, but I particularly dislike dancing. I feel that it is easy to form an ambiguous relationship during the dance; I like mountain climbing, and the feeling of reaching the top of the mountain is very heroic, and swimming Exercise is not good. As soon as you get into the water, you have to stretch your arms and kick your legs. You feel tired before you swim 50 meters, which makes you feel frustrated!

Such candidates give the interviewer the impression that they are too aggressive, intolerant, and indiscriminate. Don't you know that each profession has its own path, and hobbies are also professions. If you don't like something, it may be because you are not professional. Also, what if the interviewer happens to have a hobby that the applicant belittles? What if the boss of the company happens to have a hobby that is devalued?

Focus on your own hobbies and leave others alone.

Answer Secret 6: Don’t let hobbies become hobbies.

Everything should be done too much, and hobbies should also be moderate. When talking about "hobbies" to the interviewer, remember to speak in moderation and not to talk about hobbies as hobbies. For example: when applying for the position of vice president of public relations, you can tell the interviewer that you like to drink red wine, talk about the characteristics of French red wine, Australian red wine, American red wine or even South American red wine, and even point out typical misunderstandings in red wine culture. But you can't say that you can't do it without drinking every day. If you think about drinking every day when you get up from bed, the interviewer will immediately think that you are a drunkard. He even boasted about a certain time when he knocked down several people and drank two or three kilograms of alcohol. In the end, he slept for two days or went to the hospital to cure his hangover. Wouldn't this make him a drunkard?

Hobbies and hobbies are just one word apart, hell and earth! ;