what animal are you what do you do if your interviewer asked you this slightly weird
interview question do you pick your favorite animal what you think your interviewer's favorite
is well in this video i'm going to give you an example of some animals that you can include in
your answer to this strange interview question and what to avoid in your answer i'm amri
celeste an interview coach and hr recruitment specialist with over 10 years hiring experience
and i make videos to help you get hired fast so if you're job hunting or interviewing do like and
subscribe and tap the notification bell so you'll know when a new video is ready so let's look at a
couple of variations to this question so you don't get caught out in your interview as well as what
animal are you an interviewer might also ask what animal would you be or what's your favorite animal
so why do interviewers ask this tells them three main things first how you handle curveball
questions do you freeze does your mind go blank do you give up and say i don't know maybe you just
give it your best shot and pick an animal you like or are you calm and confident do you pause before
your answer to think of an animal it's traits and an answer that will impress your interviewer
second is how creative you are do you pick something unusual or do you pick something
really obvious there are some obvious answers which i'll share with you shortly and if you
do give one of these you just need to make sure that you back it up with a reason as to why you
picked this answer third thing this tells them is whether or not you prepared for your interview
and it doesn't mean whether or not you prepared a list of animals in advance as it's very unlikely
that you would have known that they were going to ask you this question it's understanding the
company the culture the key skills required and linking your animal to this you can watch this
video which covers all the key areas that you need to cover when preparing for your interview one
thing to remember is that although this is a tough interview question it's unlikely to be a make or
break question in the interview process unless you do something like picking an animal that is
the polar opposite to the working environment for example you pick a grizzly bear and you explain
it's because they like to live alone solitary in isolation and you're going for a job in a big team
that is very sociable where you'll be engaging and partnering with lots of people then this
could affect the interview outcome because you've picked an animal whose traits are at odds with the
culture of the company and the job and the working environment but generally it's just a question to
get more of an idea about your character and skills and also how you approach answering
tough interview questions if you do struggle with tough interview questions and answers you can grab
a copy of my top 20 interview answers guide it covers difficult questions like what would you
do if we didn't give you the job and how do you handle pressure what's your greatest weakness
it's totally free you can download your copy below and it also covers what you should be asking your
interviewers at the end of the interview so you can grab yours below what to avoid the
most common thing people do is freeze up and say i'm not sure i don't know or they might pick like
a favorite animal something that they liked in their childhood um a client once told me that um
they said that they would be a pony from my little pony because they liked that when they were young
and it's not a bad answer it's cute but it must be something where the skills of that animal
are linked to the key skills in the role in some way if you can try to avoid a textbook answer like
a line because it's strong a cheetah because it's fast try to think about the skills that you're
attributing to the animal the best way not to get caught out is to prepare as i mentioned earlier
and while you can't prepare for every question you can prepare for weird interview questions like i
was once asked what what cake would you be or what type of cake would you be and when you get used to
um answering these questions and you understand the approach then you can answer any weird or
strange interview question i might actually do a video showing how i answered that cake question
how to answer how to answer as i mentioned earlier is to link the skills in the animal cake superhero
whatever the question is to the skills in the role and you can find this under the skills
and experience section in the job description so some smart answers that you could give would be
a lioness because although lions are strong and powerful they have actually been reported to be
fairly lazy according to google they can spend 18 to 20 hours a day napping possibly up to 24 hours
whereas the lioness does all of the hunting gives birth teaches the cubs important survival
traits so picking something like a lioness can demonstrate tenacity and the skill of being a hard
worker over the popular choice of something like a lion i use lioness because it's my go-to animal
but leave a comment and let me know what animal you would be i'd be really interested to see what
some of you will choose if you were trying to demonstrate aspects of intelligence you could
use animals such as chimpanzees they are not only one of the most intelligent animals on the planet
they can manipulate their surroundings to help their community such as learning how to use tools
to speed up tasks so if you're demonstrating helpfulness intelligence or your ability to
work as part of a team then this could be a good animal dolphins are well known to be extremely
intelligent as well this is normally one of the first animals people think of when they think of
super intelligent animals they have complex brains and demonstrate advanced language comprehension
and they're also one of the few species that can recognize themselves among many other skills
if you're getting value from this so far do click like it makes a huge difference
and helps this video show up for more people searching on youtube if you wanted to demonstrate
planning certain types of birds such as scrub jays are masters at planning ahead which is a
great skill to demonstrate in the type of job where you're involved in group work or long-term
projects for example scrub j's plan for the future by storing food they think will be limited
anticipating future needs and this used to be considered a complex skill unique to human beings
or if you can include insects in your answer you could include something like a glowworm this might
sound odd but it will make your interviewers sit up and wonder why you chose it not only do they
put on a stunning and deadly bioluminescent light display they're strategic they do
this strategically to catch prey so this could help to demonstrate your ability to strategize
if you had any key takeaways in this let me know in the comments i hope these suggestions got your
mind working thank you so much for watching if you haven't already do like and subscribe
tap the notification bell if you haven't and hopefully i will see you again in the next video
you