[MUSIC] In a previous module you learned about behavioral or competency-based interview questions. Those are the tell me about a time questions where the interviewer asks you to tell him or her about a past experience and how you handled that situation. With this tell me about a time questions, a hiring manager is looking for evidence of how you've behaved in the past. The idea is that your past behavior is the best predictor of your future behavior on the job. In this module you are going to learn strategies for answering a different kind of question. They're often called situational interview questions. These are questions that typically start with, what would you do if? Or, how would you handle? In a what if question, the interviewer presents a realistic problem in a hypothetical situation and asks for your response. It's not expected that you've actually faced the situation, although you may have. You are given a realistic problem and then asked how you would solve it. These questions are different from the ones you've seen before because you're not expected to have past experiences to call upon. The interviewer is not trying to predict future behavior from past actions. Instead, the interviewer is looking to see how you think the problem through. He or she wants to see how you think, not just how well you've memorized answers or how well you tell a story. When you're given a question like this, your strategy is to put yourself in the situation and use your imagination and thinking skills. So why do hiring managers ask this kind of question? Well, traditional questions can have easily memorized answers. Competency-based questions asked you to relate a story from experiences you've already had. Situational interview questions are designed to draw out more of your analytical and problem-solving skills. A hiring manager is looking to see how you go about solving problems and resolving conflicts. There's some language there. Solving problems and resolving conflicts. You may wonder why we say solving problems in English and resolving conflicts. When do we use solving? When do we use resolving? The slide shows the common collocations with these two related verbs. Solve is used more to mean find an answer to a problem. Resolve is use with difficulties, disagreements, disputes. It means to end a difficulty, find a way to bring disagreements or disputes to an end. So the hiring manager wants to assess your problem-solving skills and your approaches to conflict resolution. He or she is also looking to see how you respond to problems with short notice and little preparation. The interviewer wants to know how well you'll fit into the company's culture, how well you respond to problems, and how well you manage the unexpected. For example, let's say you're applying for a customer service position. An interviewer might ask a question about handling an angry customer. Even if the customer is wrong, [LAUGH] hiring managers don't want to hear you talk about how customers are often wrong. They don't want to hear you criticize the idea that a customer is always right. They don't want to hear you rant about unrealistic customer expectations. They want to hear how you're going to solve the problem. They want you to show that you can handle the customer with courtesy even if that customer behaves badly. And maybe you're applying for a management position. Then you might be asked a question about a subordinate who's not getting the job done. Well, the hiring manager doesn't want to hear that you're a strict task master who doesn't tolerate slackers and that you'd fire the person on the spot. Brutal solutions to leadership challenges do not belong in the modern workplace. This is your opportunity to demonstrate good teamwork skills, mature emotional intelligence, and ethical leadership qualities. Hiring managers who use these what if questions are looking for responses that are thoughtful, analytical, and oriented towards solving the problem in a way that best serves the company and the interests of the parties involved. Now there's always the possibility that you do have experience in your background that matches the what if situation. Then you can bring that experience into your response. You can use an abbreviated S-T-A-R approach, as you'll see demonstrated in a later lesson in this module. There's another type of what if question, a variation on the question. This is the so-called wildcard question. Anything from, if you were a color what color would you be? To, if you had a choice between two superpowers, being invisible or being able to fly, which would you choose? To a question like, how many grains of sands are there in the Sahara? Now clearly these are questions for which no right answer exists. That's not always the case with some wildcard questions. The 100 pennies puzzle question shown here does have a correct answer. But in either case, the wildcard question gives a hiring manager insight into your thought processes as well as an idea [LAUGH] of how you respond to the unpredictable. More broadly, situational interview questions give hiring managers insight into what kind of person you are and the values you work from. This aspect of the question is so important that the entire next lesson focuses on it. [MUSIC]