By YOUNG MONEY Staff
8 March 2012

Young professionals interviewing for jobs need to be ready to answer a range of questions, but there are certain inquiries that can be used by hiring managers in an effort to catch candidates off-guard and jar loose hidden information.

Job seekers who are either currently employed or who have been jobless long enough to count as being long-term unemployed are likely to encounter more questions than other candidates, according to Forbes.

 

Market experts have established that hiring managers are only trying to determine three things when interviewing applicants, Forbes reports. People interviewing these candidates want to know if the person is able to do the job, if they will truly enjoy the position and if they will fit in well with the other people in the office and the corporate culture.

In addition to these basic questions, hiring managers might ask more specific questions in hopes of uncovering additional information that could disqualify the candidate, according to Forbes.

Young professionals who are currently employed and looking at other job opportunities might be asked how they can find time to go on interviews while working, the media outlet reports.

"The real question is whether you are lying to and short-changing your current employer while looking for other work," job search expert Joyce Lain Kennedy told the news source.

Hiring managers asking this question may worry that if the candidate is "cheating" by interviewing for another role, he might do the same to their next employer, according to the media outlet.
Applicants who have been job searching for a long period of time after being laid off might be asked how long they have been unemployed, and how many other people were let go at the same time, the news source reports. This question could be easily followed by "why were you laid off?" Kennedy told the media outlet that this question is designed to uncover why the applicant was laid off in the first place.

The hiring manager could be making an effort to determine if the previous employer perceived the worker as underperforming and therefore let him go, according to the news source. The job search expert recommends providing a response along the lines of "I don’t know the reason. I was an excellent employee who gave more than a day’s work for a day’s pay."

Hiring managers have many other questions they could ask, but the aforementioned ones are tailored to candidates who are either working currently or who have been jobless for a while.