Job interviews can intimidate people. You only have a few minutes, perhaps just the first few seconds, to make a positive impression once you finally get to the interview step of the job-hunting process.

With many first interviews being done via phone calls these days, your tone of voice and ability to speak in complete and direct sentences is more important than ever. People are judging how you sound and how well you can articulate ideas in phone interviews. How you look isn’t playing a role, after all.

Interviews can be intimidating, so be prepared for these basic questions as a first step to overcome that feeling of intimidation.

So being prepare for questions is more important than ever. That’s what attracted me to a recent post on Doostang.com, a site for careers in finance.

“10 Likely Interview Questions, and How to Answer Them,” touches on all the basics, such as:

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What do you know about the company?
3. What is your greatest strength?
4. What is your greatest weakness?
5. Describe a challenge or conflict you faced at work, and how you handled it.

I particularly liked its advice about the weakness question, one people too often try to finesse and sound overly cleaver about. “Don’t mention anything that will automatically disqualify you (for example: don’t say you’re bad with numbers if you want an accounting job), but be realistic about your abilities,” the article states.

Read the entire piece, it will help you be yourself, and sell yourself, in an interview.
John N. Frank