23 Topgrading Interview Questions You Must Know

so in this video what i'm going to do is i'm going to walk you through 23 top grading questions that you can expect to get on any type of top grading interview and not so much how to answer them or what to say but more so of what the interviewer is looking for what's their intention behind asking that question and i'm going to walk you through that whole series of you know what those look like so you might be scratching your head and saying don what's a top grading interview well a top grading interview is a very strict method of interviewing that is designed to cut through to the truth and weed out the weaker candidates it's designed to allow employers to learn more about a candidate than they could in a traditional interview sense so unlike normal interviews hiring managers are looking for candidates to talk about real life situations not hypothetical so you can't bluff your way through a top grading interview and they are designed to just weed out any of the cliche type of answers that a lot of people are known for like let's say for example you know you go into a normal interview and they say you know what are your weaknesses and you say well i can get a little frustrated when i'm waiting on someone for something and they don't deliver on time well in a normal interview they'd be like yeah that sounds great but in a top grading interview they'll say well you know that sounds more like a strength why don't you tell me why that's a weakness and you'd be like what and then you know you just dumbfounded and that's what the top grading interview is designed to do there's a whole series of follow-up questions after each question to dig through to get you to reveal a truthful answer another sample might be where they say you know why do you want to work here and you say well because i've heard of great things about your company and they'll be like oh really you know what have you heard specifically and you know where did you hear that and what about that excites you and they're not going to let you off the hook in a top grading interview i mean if they do it's because they have no interest in hiring you but the whole point of top grading is to hire only a players now a players those are the applicants who are considered to be in the top 10 of candidates that are available for the position but anyways you might not like the process but what it is it's designed to weed out the weaker candidates and hire only the best which would be you and that's why you're here because you are the best now the good news is is that top grading candidates get above average pay you know because they're in the top 10 percent they're obviously not going to get the normal salary range for that position they're going to be on the higher end so that's a good thing for you so the first thing that an employer will do they will create what's called a job score card and what this is a job scorecard it's a document that defines all of the the needs the accountabilities for the position all the types of skills that they're looking for the type of experience it's a whole detailed document it's kind of like an avatar for the position so they're starting off you know with paper and pencil and they're detailing the ideal candidate of what they're looking for the next thing they're going to do is they're going to post the job position and various job boards and then they're going to conduct phone screening interviews usually 15 to 20 minutes and these are just quick interviews to find out you know what you're looking for and if you don't they think you might have what it takes for the position now if you get past that then you'll be invited for a face to face top grading interview which is a chronological interview where they start at the beginning sometimes even in childhood but usually just high school or college years then they're going to move into competency questions and behavioral questions where they're going to ask you a whole series of those to see if you really know what you're talking about and then after all of that they're going to sit down with all the different hiring managers that you met with and they're going to discuss all the candidates they're going to pick three of those candidates and then they're going to bring those candidates back in for final rounds of interviews schedule reference calls and they may even put you through what's called a candidate test drive which means before they actually offer you the job they want to put you on the job and maybe you know it's just for a day maybe it's a week maybe it's just a half day i don't really know it just depends but the candidate test drive allows them to evaluate you on the job without really making an offer to you but it also gives you the opportunity to evaluate them without making a commitment to them so after all that let me walk you through some of the questions that make up a top grading interview now they always start off with soft and easy questions because they want to ease their way into the interview they want to build rapport with you and they want you to feel comfortable so that you can show them the best version of yourself that is humanly possible i mean they don't want you to be nervous or uncomfortable they want you to relax they want you to be at your best so that you're more likely to be able to tell them about you you know without being nervous so the first question they're going to ask you is they're going to simply start off and say tell me about your background now they'd like to ask this instead of asking tell me about yourself because we all know that you know you've done this we've all looked up videos on how to answer tell me about yourself so everybody has their pat answer for tell me about yourself well in a top grading interview they they don't want you giving rehearsed answers they want natural answers so that's why they're going to ask you to tell me about your background instead of asking you to tell me about yourself because it's going gonna dodge you know a rehearsed answer for most people and it's also gonna give the candidate a little bit more direction on you know what the employer wants to know the next question you're likely to get is what did you enjoy most and least about your college years now they're going to dig into college and they're probably going to spend maybe 20 30 minutes just on college questions so they're gonna ask you you know what did you enjoy most and least about your college years and what they're trying to understand is you know what you liked and what you disliked and this kind of helps them understand your maturity level and you know whether or not you'll fit in with their culture now they're more likely to dig deeper into college if you're a recent graduate but you know if it's been 15 or 20 years they may not spend as much time on college though they may ask you some questions just to kind of see how you have matured over the years next thing they're going to do is they're going to ask you to tell me about the grades that you received while you're in college and if your grades are low they're going to say well what happened dawn and if they're great they're going to be like hey don your grades are great how did you do that now if your grades are mediocre let's say you had mediocre grades as a freshman and then you improved over the following years that's really what they're looking for they want to look for progression they want to see where you started off as a freshman and then they want to see if you progressed throughout the years and got better or maybe you got worse or maybe you didn't start doing better until you know your sophomore or junior year and you know i don't know but what they're really looking for is progression upwards or or downwards and they're looking free to explain what happened next thing they're going to do is they're going to say what major did you choose why did you choose it and when did you make that decision and what they're looking for are candidates who are crystal clear about what they want where they want to be and when they can understand this that you know the candidate had an idea or made a decision you know early on in the process and then decided to go to college for that that means that candidate has a clear picture of what they wanted to do and then they acted on it and that's the essence of an a player an a player knows exactly what he or she wants and then they go for it so you want to have a clear answer for that question when it comes up and they also want to know when you entered college were you undecided and when you came out did you have clear focus because we all know that you know some people they go to college and they're not exactly sure why they're going there or you know what they want to do but you know maybe when they graduate you know they have a better idea it just takes longer for some people but these are the types of things that they want to figure out in a top grade interview they all interview they also want to know whether you know it was your idea or was it your parents and they have very tricky ways of asking you questions about your influences and as to whether you know they were your own or your parents or your uncle whoever next thing their next college question they're going to ask you is to tell me about the clubs that you were in and what kind of roles did you hold so club participation shows that you were active during your college years and they're not just looking for you know whether you were in certain clubs but whether you held certain key positions within those clubs because that demonstrates uh qualities for leadership another question they're going to ask you is did you play sports while you were in college simple yes or no if you did they're going to say well you can tell me what positions you played and what they're really looking for are team captains because this is a leadership quality you see to be a team captain in college you have to be selected by your peers that means if everybody on the team liked you chances are you have what it takes for leadership position down the road so that's what they're looking for there now after all the college questions then they're going to move into work experience so the first question they're going to ask you is what led you to join let's just say abc corporation and what they want to understand is what was important to you in your career and you know what were you passionate about that made you want to take a job with you know abc corp because this is going to help them structure an offer that you know you might accept if they were to extend one to you and what they're really looking for all throughout this asking you know why did you accept this position they're looking for patterns of why you accepted job after job after job it was it money was it opportunity was it challenge was it growth and you know if you keep saying well i left this job for more money and i left this job for more money um then you're going to get branded as a c player whether you like it or not i mean maybe you weren't paid well in your previous job but if you go out there and you tell them that you left each job for more money they're going to label you as a c player and they're probably not going to want to have anything to do with you now if you tell them that you know you left your jobs for greater challenges you know then they they're more likely to think that they're dealing with a high performer which is what they want to be and that's why you're there because you're a high performer i can almost guarantee you that if you're getting a top grading interview you are a high performer because you've already made it through several layers of screening to get to that point another question they're going to ask you is what were you hired to do and they want to know if you know if you were if you accomplished what you were hired to do so maybe you were hired to grow a sales territory maybe you were hired to create a marketing plan maybe you were hired to design a website whatever it was they want to know if you accomplished that while you were there if you didn't why didn't you and then they'll ask you a whole bunch of series of follow-up questions about you know what happened why didn't you do that you know what were the problems and that's what the top grading interview is it's digging digging digging digging to get to the truth because they want to know the truth about you and they want to weed out all the people who were just kind of throwing up a smoke screen there and just trying to get a paycheck now another thing they're going to ask you is what was your biggest accomplishment while you were working at abc corporation and how did you achieve that and they're not going to let you off the hook they are going to ask you you know for the details what were the results and it would be good to use numbers if you can to quantify your results because that's what they really want they want to know you know how you got there and you know what the numbers were and this helps them understand that you were really involved that you knew what you were doing and it shows them that they're dealing with an a player because an a player they have all the numbers they know how they did it how much it cost how long it took what resources they needed that's what a players know the c players will just kind of fumble around and you know they'll just basically give a non-answer to that question and they know that va players they will speak of many accomplishments not just one they will share credit they have no problem sharing credit with anything that they accomplish they'll tell you exactly how they did it but the c players and not so much so moving on here another question they're going to ask you is what did you like the most and the least about working at bbc corporation now this is a culture question and this is going to help them understand you know how well you are going to mesh with their company culture because we all know that culture is everything today and they don't want to take a perfectly qualified person who maybe doesn't have the right culture who isn't going to fit in with the rest of the group they don't want to stick them in with all of their other people um because that would be bad for them and that would be bad for you that you know you would be better off working somewhere else with other people who are more like-minded so that's why they're going to ask you that type of question that's why they want to know what you liked and that's going to help them understand whether you know you're going to be happy there or not and that you're going to fit in with you know their best people another question they're going to ask you is what impact have you had on the company while working in this position now this could be you know you may not know i don't know the impact that i had on certain jobs that i worked at but it's just one of the questions and you may not even get it it may depend on the role like maybe maybe if you're in executive management that would be a question but if you're just interviewing for let's say a senior programming position or an analyst they may or may not ask that question and it may trip you up but what they're looking for is a response that just kind of demonstrates the value of your time while you were there because we all know some people um they could work three or four years somewhere and really not make any contributions at all and i know that's not you but there are people and and there are rules like that too there are roles i think that kind of disguise the contributions and it's really hard to put a label on you know your contribution of being you know in customer service for three years or a customer service manager for three years be like i don't know helped out people but it's just it's a top grade question and it's something that you should be prepared for and usually response that has quantifiable results of performance is best and that's that's a true measure of a high performer and what they really want to know is you know did you move the needle while you were there did you shift the company in a new direction and for most people that's gonna be no they you know a lot of companies i worked at i didn't change the whole direction but if i was at a very high level of vp level or something then then maybe i did and that's what they're looking for they're looking for those needle movers those a players who can literally shift the whole direction of the company and like i said for a lot of people you know that's that's not going to be true you know part of that question could entail you know did you develop a new sales territory did you land a huge client i mean just i mean think about this for a second if you're working somewhere and you bring in one huge client to the company that could be shifting the company in a new direction so you may even have that accomplishment without really even realizing it and that's what this video here is here designed to help you to do is to to bring out those to bring out those accomplishments bring out the best in you and you know kind of take inventory on the kinds of things that you have done in the past because you know some of us we have 20 years of accomplishments and you know we forget them if we don't go back and re-remember them another question they might ask you is you know did you change the way the company handles its customers you know that impacted the bottom line i mean and this could be perfect for a customer service scenario customer service manager scenario where you know maybe you know the company was doing customer service one way and it was really bad and clients were leading or customers were leaving but you changed the way you handled things and that in fact that affected the bottom line and you know it kept people coming back or it saved a whole bunch of people from leaving either way those are good stories to share in a top grade interview when you get asked that question another form of question they might ask is you know how did you change or contribute to the company culture and for most people they'd be like didn't change it at all but again you know if you're at the executive level you may have made some changes that changed the culture that allowed for you know the culture to expand the culture to grow and so that it attracted other people into your company and then it just kind of took off you know i think google's a great example of that another question they'll ask you is what led to your decision to leave the company and they'll ask you for each position now instead of asking you know why did you leave abc corp they're going to ask you know what led to your decision to leave abc corp and this kind of opens the door for you to elaborate on your reasons or motives for leaving and this kind of gets you to volunteer you know what happened so they can understand you know your motivations your decision-making process and your judgment for each position and what they're really looking for is an upward trend in responsibility and income so for each position that you left they'd like to see that you made more money and they'd like to see that you moved up in responsibility now if you if you went down in money and you went down your responsibility that shows your career trajectory is going downward and i'm not sure that they're going to want to hire somebody whose career trajectory is going down they're looking for people who are on the upswing but you know every situation is different and i'm not here to tell you what's right and what's wrong i'm just here to tell you what the top grading interview encumbers and entails and you know what they're looking for then they're going to move into questions about what is most exciting to you about this position so you know why are you here why did you apply to this job and you know what was your most favorite and least favorite job and why they want to know what you liked about past jobs what you least liked and then they want to compare that to what this role is about to see if you know you would be a good fit if you're going to like doing this kind of thing all right so the next question you're going to get is how did you get along with your manager and i know a lot of people don't like that question or they want to they see this as an opportunity to trash talk their manager in a job interview well that's not the place because you're in the job interview to show them to show a prospective employer what you can do for them not trash talk your manager but what they want to know is they wonder how long how well you got along with your manager so be honest but but be civil this is this is not an opportunity this is not a [ __ ] fest this is not a time to say bad things about your manager you can either say you know i got along with them i didn't get along with them here's why but what they want to do is they want to understand what you didn't like because they're searching for they're searching for compatibility they want to assign you a manager that you'll be compatible with so if there are certain management traits that that you don't like let them be known so they can put you with a manager who you know will work better with you another question they're going to ask you is tell me about a project that you failed on and why did you fail and what they're looking for here is one that you failed because if you've worked on projects and you haven't failed you probably haven't worked long enough so they want to know you know how you failed um was it because you know lack of resources was it because of lack of funding lack of time you know what were your reasons or are your reasons just a bunch of lame excuses so that's kind of what they're looking for on that one and then another one they're going to ask you the follow-up to this is tell me about a project that you excelled in and why did you do so well so they want to know this this helps them understand the type of work that you enjoy doing because chances are that if you did very well on a project you loved that kind of work so they want to understand what that kind of work is so they can put you on similar projects so that you'll do well they want you to succeed another question they'll ask you is to talk about a difficult decision that you had to make and why was it so difficult and what they want to do is they want to understand your your reasoning process of you know how you handle a difficult decision what made it difficult and um you know and how you worked your way out of it and part of that is they're searching for specifics i mean was it difficult because it was hard or was it hard because that's just a weaker area for you see that's one of the tricks in a top grading interview when they ask you you know something and you say oh it was hard they're going to assume that that's you know not one of your strong suits more than likely now another thing they're going to ask you is what about this position is most exciting to you so what about this job that you're applying to excites you the most and what they're looking for is how you express your desire and enthusiasm for that job i mean do you sound like you're aligned with the job and and the company culture do you sound like you're going to do well or you know do you just kind of generally just talk about the position well you know these things here excite me here or do you just kind of be like yes this job really gets me excited here's why these are the kinds of things i love doing and i can do them for you that's kind of the style of the answer that they're looking for minus the the table pounding um so next question they're going to ask you is you know how would you describe the culture at abc corporation so they want to know what type of company culture you were working in before and what they're going to do is evaluate and compare that to the type of culture that they have and whether you will be compatible in their culture because like i said earlier regardless of whether you're qualified for this job or not you have to be a culture fit so they're going to ask you you know what did you like most about your previous culture and and i can't tell you what to say about that i mean maybe you didn't like it maybe it was a hostile culture and i mean you hated it and over here well maybe it's not a hostile culture i don't know but just be prepared for that type of question and you might need to go back and rethink what type of culture you had in your previous job so that you can articulate that in the interview because that question usually catches people off guard and they just kind of scratch their head and they're like i i don't know and when you're in a top grading interview you don't want to scratch your head and say i don't know you want to have good answers for everything another question they're going to ask you is what project role do you enjoy taking on the most so you know do you like to take the lead do you like to be a peer and and why and again this is to help them understand where they can place you on a project because if they have a 15 or 20 person project and you enjoy taking you know this certain team lead role and you do well in that that's probably where they're going to want to put you or they're going to put you in a position that is going to be moving towards that and another question they're going to ask you is tell me what you liked best about your past manager now this is not an opportunity for you to say nothing and a players won't say nothing even if an a player didn't like his or her past manager they won't they won't talk negatively about them they they'll talk they they might say some things that that aren't positive about them but they'll be civil and and they'll basically explain in detail you know what they liked and why they didn't like that and um and again the reason that they're doing this is so that they could put you with a manager who doesn't you know have those bad traits they want to put you with a manager who has the traits that you like that you like in people that you're looking for and the type of manager that is going to manage you the way that you want to be managed that's why they ask these questions and then like i said they're going to ask you all of those questions for each job that you had you know for at least the last 10 years so these top graded interviews can go on for you know four five six seven eight hours and it's this constant questioning and digging and again they're not really meant to to beat you up they're meant to be thorough so that's the gist of a top grading interview and then you know they're going to go into competency questions or behavioral questions to evaluate your skills but they're going to do that in any job interview and then after all of that interviewing after you know maybe four or five six hours of interviewing they're going to compare all the results that they collected they're going to write them in that scorecard remember that scorecard that i talked about and they're going to fill in all the details then they're going to go back and they're going to meet with a couple of different managers and they're all going to talk and they're going to decide to bring back two or three candidates for another round of interviews or they might just skip that process and move directly into what i call the candidate test drive where they're going to invite you to a real life scenario it could be a troubleshooting scenario maybe you show up and you know you have to troubleshoot some computer code or some networking or maybe you're going to sit in on a meeting maybe you're going to work on a marketing project maybe you're going to go on sales calls could be anything but that's what the candidate test drive is and they might invite two or three people to go through that test drive you know making sales calls giving presentations whatever now this test drive is a two-way street this allows you to evaluate them before you accept a job and it also allows them to evaluate you to see if they were right about their decision as to whether they want to make you an offer or not so it's two-way street i love the test drive i hope you get one it's really you know it's a great thing for both parties and then you know after that you know after they evaluate the three candidates they're going to make one of them an offer and or maybe two who knows they might they might fall in love with two candidates but anyway they're gonna make one of them offer and then they're going to go into the references and this is where they're going to call your manager or what they what they actually do in a real top grading interview is they make you arrange all of your references that means you have to go down your list of five six references call each of those and say hey you need to call up mr jones over here because he wants to talk to you about me and my time there now that's one of the things that i don't like or agree with in the reference check in the top grading interview like i said it's called a threat of a reference check and it's where they make the candidate arrange all the reference calls i don't like that part i would rather that you know i just give them the phone numbers and they just call them up but that's not what a top grading interview is you can call it you know what you want but a top grading interview means that you arrange all of those calls and um not just what you gotta do so that my friend is top grading in a nutshell now if you want to go deeper into top grading there's a book it's by brad smart he wrote it it's probably like yay thick it's hundreds of pages long and it will give you all the details of top grading and it will literally bore you to tears now if you really want to go deeper and study top grading from the employer's side um you can get this book here this is called the seven master steps to hiring a players you can get this on amazon this book is not going to teach you how to answer top grading questions this book is going to teach you why employers ask the questions that they ask and the types of responses that they're looking for now this is an employer guide and i'm only showing you this here because this is about the closest thing i have the top grading another side of my business here is i teach employers i educate and coach employers on how to conduct interviews so that they can properly interview you and find out you know that you're the best person for the job so that's the other side that we do and that's why we wrote this book here and this is you know our our way of educating employers on how to do better jobs of interviewing but this is not a top grading book it's sort of close it's it's a nicer version of top grading it doesn't go into all the super nitty gritty stuff that top grading does but it does it in a much more i think so in a much more elegant eloquent way so like i said this book is not going to teach you how to answer questions this is meant for employers but if you really want to dig deeper into the employer side and see what's going on there now you can get that on amazon get the kindle version whatever it's like a few bucks but again i'm not i'm not telling you to go out and get this at all this is the guide for employers the guide that i think is best for you is the top 10 interview questions now this book you can actually get for free minus this professional edition right here this is actually for a special program that i'm creating hence the the set design here but this book here will teach you how to answer the 10 most common interview questions in a way that will satisfy a top grading interviewer and that's really what you want now it's only going to show you how to do the top 10 and that's enough to get you started you can get this for free you can go to jobinterviewtools.com/top10 and in this book i will show you exactly how to answer each of the 10 most common questions also teach you how to answer proper or ask proper follow-up questions so that you can ask good questions to your interviewer about the job because that's part of an interview like even in a top grade interview it's not just the interviewer asking you questions you have to ask them back if you just sit there the whole time and answer their questions you know you're out of there you need to have good questions to ask them and in this book here i think i have at least 13 or 14 of them that'll help get you started um and they're designed to kind of stimulate you know your mind into thinking you know what's most important to be in this position and then those are the types of questions that you want to ask your employer or not your employer prospective employer your interviewer so like i said you get this book for free and soon i'm actually coming out with a video version of this program it's going to be a professional edition hence this set here i'm still recording this program as we speak which is why i'm on this new set and this is going to be a ver a professional version with 10 most common questions it's also going to have 25 behavioral questions it's going to have me teaching you every step of the way and we're going to go through each step how to answer each question all the nitty-gritty details and then we're going to do 25 behavioral questions that is going to be available on video and audio and in book form and you'll be able to get that but right now it doesn't exist yet i am still working on that give me time i hope to have it out in another month or two and then i will let you know so that is all i have for you today and now you can consider yourself an expert on top grading interviews or at least more of an expert than you were 20 minutes ago before you started watching this and you know what top grading means now now to all the employers out there who watch my videos and i know that you watch them because i see you chiming in in the comments and you always say good things but to all the employers out there one of the things that that i do over here job interview tools in addition to teaching job seekers how to properly interview for jobs i also teach employers how to properly construct interviews good interviews so that they can go out and find the best candidates and one of the things that i teach are the seven master steps to hiring a players and i do this virtually i do this in person so if you are interested in having me come out to your company either virtually or in person and sit down with your staff your hiring managers or you know maybe maybe you're the owner of the company and you want me to train you or you want me to train your managers these are the kinds of things that i do and and i teach people how to properly conduct job interviews and ask the right questions and not only ask the right questions but ask questions that help them understand and learn more about the candidate so that you know you can make an informed hiring decision and so that you hire people into your company who you know who want to be there who are going to work long term who are excited about the kinds of things that you are doing at your company so if you're interested in that please reach out to me at don at jobinderviewtools.com and we can talk further and that's all i have for you guys today this is actually this is one of the few videos that i make that benefits job seekers and and hiring managers and employers so maybe there'll be more of those to come who knows but anyway that's all i have for you today if you like my channel please subscribe if you found this video helpful please give it a thumbs up i would greatly appreciate it and share it with a friend and i'll see you in the next video take care bye now

Channel: Don Georgevich

Views: 41,590

Keywords: topgrading, topgrading interview questions and answers, topgrading interview questions pdf, topgrading questions, topgrading interview questions, topgrading approach, topgrading interview preparation, topgrading process, topgrading criticism, topgrading methodology, topgrading book, topgrading book summary, topgrading interview, job interview questions and answers

Id: yBSqgpXUAhI

Length: 35min 27sec (2127 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022