Finding the right talent can be a long, laborious task for leaders and hiring managers. After sifting through hundreds of resumes and conducting multiple interviews over several days or weeks, candidates start to blend together, and the same responses to the same questions get old. That’s why a candidate’s quirky or surprising response to a common question can be so memorable.

Memorable isn’t always good, though. You don’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons, but you also don’t want to blend in so much that you’re forgotten as soon as you walk out of the office.

We asked leaders and recruiters to share the most memorable responses they’ve gotten to common interview questions. Their answers offer valuable insights for job hunters on how to make a positive – and lasting – impression.

Do demonstrate confidence – and adaptability

“Why do you think you’re a good fit for this position?” It’s a classic interview question, and most people answer it by listing the skills on their resume, their educational background, and their experience in the field, says Shayne Sherman, CEO of TechLoris.

“The answer that stood out the most was the person who said: ‘I am more than the skills listed on my resume. I am the type of person who rises to a challenge and becomes a creator instead of someone who just falls in line. You can’t learn that in college, though I have the degree. It’s something you’re born with and I’m born with it,’” said Sherman.

Sherman took the response as confidence and insight into what that person felt they could contribute, he said. “Someone who feels they can mold to whatever the job requires of them goes a long way in my book, and I’m willing to give such a person a chance,” said Sherman.

Making one bad hire might not seem like a huge blip on the radar. However, the negativity associated with the wrong fit could send ripples throughout your organization. This can impact your business’s bottom line in a variety of ways.

Below are several ways hiring the wrong person can impact your business.

Budget

Taking the time to find the right candidate requires resources in time spent and the costs associated with paying for ads on job searching platforms. Then, when you bring the new hire in, there’s onboarding. After all of this, if the employee isn’t the right fit, you’ll have to repeat the process again, requiring more time and money spent.

How much could this cost your business? On average, one bad hire could set a company back $14,900 — and this is for just one employee. This number also doesn’t take into consideration the costs to replace them or to retain other employees. The Undercover Recruiter states bad hires cost organizations on average $240,000.

This is a sizeable expense that not only impacts your company’s bottom line, it can affect other areas of your business as well.

It was barely a dusting of snow mixed with rain and we received a text at night from the high school alerting us that the schools will be closed the next day due to the snow storm. The media tried to frighten us with a prediction of six-to-twelve inches of snow and the governor warned us to only go on the roads if absolutely necessary. I’m sure you already know how this ends, we received about three inches of snow and it mostly melted by mid-afternoon.

Calling for a snow day the night before on the possibility of a storm, out of fear of what people will say if you didn't, is a loser mindset. This way of thinking is based upon what could go wrong, being afraid of taking risks, focusing on covering your backside and playing it too safe. Unfortunately, most people navigate their careers in this fashion.They are too conservative and adverse to taking thought-out calculated risks. Most of the day is spent worrying, doing things to cover yourself if something doesn't work out and agreeing with the consensus discussions out of fear of being original in voicing your opinion. This is a sure-fire way to just plod along in your career and never make it very far. You will be part of the great herd shuffling along with pack. You’ll blend in unnoticed and will be overlooked.

Here are examples of loserthink:

1. You go for a safe career, like being an attorney like your parents, even though you wanted to be a novelist and write the next great American novel. You don’t even take a few writing classes or try to join the college newspaper to prove it to yourself that you have talent.

If you keep hearing about artificial intelligence but aren’t quite sure what it means or how it works, you’re not alone. 

There’s been much confusion among the general public about the term, not helped by dramatic news stories about how “AI” will destroy jobs, or companies that overstate their abilities to “use AI.” 

A lot of that confusion comes from the misuse of terms like AI and machine learning. So here’s a short text-and-video guide to explain them:  

Put your best foot forward at your next big job interview with CIPHR’s essential guide to acing that interview

Interviewing for a new role or internal promotion is, understandably, a nerve-wracking process for many. CIPHR’s ultimate guide to acing an interview is here to support you every step of the way, from pre-interview preparation to what to do on the big day, and how best to follow up with the recruiter and hiring manager after your meeting.

How to prepare for an interview

1. Do your research

Hopefully you will have researched the role and employer before submitting an application, but now that you’ve been invited for an interview, you’ll want to refresh your knowledge and dive into deeper detail. Start by looking at the organisation’s website and social media pages, and going over the job advert and description. Take a wider look at the industry and the organisation’s competitors, too, and you might want to check out the company’s Glassdoor page as well to get some insight into what it’s really like to work there.

Some key areas of information you’ll want to cover off with your research might include:

• The organisation’s core products and services
• Their key competitors
• What you think differentiates this company from others in the market
• The role’s requirements and how your skills and expertise will meet them

You will also want to research the people you are meeting – LinkedIn and the company’s website will be your key sources of information – as well as the office location, and your route there (whether that’s walking, by car, or by public transport).

It’s impossible to predict when opportunity is going to knock. Whether you are actively applying to new jobs, you’re approached by a recruiter out of the blue, or an internal position at your current company opens up, it’s essential to be able to respond quickly. Here are six essential items everyone should keep at the ready in their career toolbox:

1. A Thoughtfully Crafted Resume: It’s incredibly difficult to build an effective resume at a moment’s notice. Creating a well-written, accomplishment-driven document that effectively conveys your strengths, skills and ambitions requires thought and preparation. Don’t leave this until the last minute; a resume created under pressure most likely won’t be your best representation.

2. A Polished LinkedIn Profile: Employers use LinkedIn to search for talent, in some cases abandoning the traditional job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed) entirely in favor of this social platform. A detailed profile modulated to your job search (subtle for the currently employed and more obvious for the active job seeker) will help put you on the radar for jobs you haven’t considered or applied to. Likewise, many employers use LinkedIn to validate what’s on your resume; in other words, if you’re not shy about highlighting some of your resume accomplishments on a public platform such as LinkedIn, you lend them more credence.

Age discrimination is cited the top obstacle to getting back into employment, according to the latest research by the job search engine Jobrapido.

The job search engine surveyed 2,027 people in the UK who are currently not in education, employment or training for work and had previously worked in management, executive, administrative or manual labour positions.

 
Nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) believe the biggest obstacle/reason to getting a new job is their age and that the role they apply for is given to a younger candidate.

Whilst 9% of the respondents stated that poor health had prevented them from getting a job, a further 11% admitted they can’t seem to find the right job to apply for.

 
11% revealed they keep going for interviews and not getting the job. 6% admitted they have lost their confidence and 6% are still confused about the job they want.

The remainder are using the time out to change careers and are thinking about taking a vocational course, consider their next role as well as travel or look at setting up their own business.

Being found on LinkedIn just might be the key to your career search. According to Jobscan, 87% of corporate recruiters use this platform to find and source candidates. Every sixty seconds, 120 people join LinkedIn. There are nearly 600 million users worldwide (and 133 million in the U.S., the largest participating country according to Kinsta). Pew Research says that over 50% of college graduates use LinkedIn, but are you using it to your best advantage? For my clients, my career coaching emphasizes personal branding—because how you present yourself online is the key to creating interest, interviews and opportunities. Here are 15 ways to improve your presence and your personal brand on LinkedIn:

1. Make Friends Fast: If you don’t have over 500 connections, you’re kinda invisible on LinkedIn. Reach out and get connected! Professionals need more than 500 connections; it’s like table stakes at a poker game. Without 500 connections, you’re not really playing to win.
2. Picture This: maybe people aren’t connecting with you because you don’t have a profile pic. Stop watching Avatar and get yourself one. Drop in a selfie with a neutral or white background, where you are dressed for work. So if you are a surfing instructor, that swimsuit on the beach is perfect! But for Linda in accounting, board shorts are probably a bad idea. The picture should be a “two button” shot (look down at your shirt and count two buttons - that’s the bottom of the frame right there). Don’t use a wedding photo, dark selfie or a picture from the stadium where you’re surrounded by your friends. Think professional and pick a pic that shows who you are.

India Business News: There are few situations in life that compare with the distress of losing a job.

More and more, people are forming their first impression of you from the results of a web search on your name. When people are evaluating you in a professional capacity, they often go directly to your LinkedIn profile. But even if their research starts with Google, they’ll end up at LinkedIn because your profile will most likely be one of the top results.

So you need to be concerned about what you put in your LinkedIn profile — making sure it’s authentic, compelling to your audience and aspirational — positioning you for the future. You need to be equally focused on removing things from your profile that will get in the way of your success. You want all of the content to “wow” those who are making decisions about you.

Here are four things you should remove from your profile in order to make a positive impact on readers.

There’s no doubt about it — interviews are tough. With so much on the line, job seekers often psych themselves out or majorly overthink things, resulting in a sub-par performance.

The good news, though, is that this is largely avoidable. If you can thoroughly practice beforehand, you’ll be able to get the jitters out, refine your responses and identify the key points you want to mention. With so many different questions asked in interviews, though, you can’t realistically rehearse all of them.

So where should you focus your efforts? Glassdoor spoke to Candace Bracher, a recruiting manager for the Information Technology division at staffing agency Addison Group. Bracher has spoken to thousands of candidates throughout her career, and identified three questions as the ones that candidates most frequently flub.

Below, Bracher expanded on what these questions are, what makes them so tough and how you can give answers bound to impress recruiters.

Question #1: Walk me through your resume.

A successful response to this request is key, as it is frequently one of the first things your interviewer will say, if not the first.

Waiting to hear back from a hiring manager or recruiter after an interview can be quite stressful, especially if you’ve made it though the rounds and are waiting for a final decision.

Whether you’re working with a recruiter or directly with a hiring manager, these are a few possible reasons you haven’t heard back after your interview.

They’re still trying to solidify the details.

Sometimes the hiring manager or recruiter has to coordinate their efforts with multiple people before giving a final answer. When a lot of people are weighing in on the hiring process and making a decision, it can be hard to accomplish that in a timely manner. The more people involved in the decision-making process, the longer it will take. People are busy, their schedules are full, and they’re not always prompt on replying to the hiring manager.

While it would be nice to not have radio silence during the process, you’re not likely to get an email letting you know things are taking a bit more time than they had originally expected. If you were told you’d hear back from the hiring manager in two weeks and it’s been three, that doesn’t mean you aren’t the chosen candidate, it could just mean that a decision hasn’t been made yet.

Try to be patient and remember that a lack of answer doesn’t mean you didn’t get the job, and you’re still a candidate until you hear otherwise.

Sometimes you have to make the difficult decision to turn down a job offer. It’s never easy to make that decision, and sometimes telling a hiring manager or recruiter is even tougher. The most important thing is that you don’t burn any bridges.

When you decline a job offer, be prompt. Once you’ve made your decision, let the hiring manager know. There’s no reason to drag things out, and the longer you take to respond, the harder the hiring manager’s job will be. They have to restart their search, so don’t leave them hanging because you’re nervous to officially decline.

The most common method of declining a job offer is to send an email. Keep it professional and be sure to end it with ‘thanks’, ‘best’, or ‘regards’, rather than something colder like ‘sincerely’. Get right to the point and let them know you’re turning down their offer, but also express your gratitude for the opportunity.

To turn down a job offer without burning bridges, keep these four things in mind:

DeNA Light-Up founder Mel Carnegie, talks about the taboo of inappropriate workplaces and how to end corporate bullying and manipulation.

Despite unemployment being at a 50-year low, some people are coming to me, a career counselor, because their job search failed.

Here is how I troubleshoot it:

Time spent. Have you spent a total of at least 50 hours of time-effective job searching? For example, more than a few hours spent developing a resume or LinkedIn profile is usually not time-effective. And of course, time spent spacing out in front of the screen doesn’t count.

Job target. To test if a client is aiming too high, I might ask, “Put yourself in the shoes of the employer. Are you likely to be the person s/he’d hire or at least interview?”

If the client is aiming a step or two down, I ask how they’d explain their rationale for doing that to prospective employers. I’d assess if my client’s answer would make the employer wonder if the stated reason isn’t the truth but rather that s/he has, for example, a serious disease or just got out of prison.

Global gender pay gap data shows many industries, including construction, financial services, medicine and more have a significant gender imbalance, with women occupying far fewer senior roles and being paid consistently less than men.

Brave New Workshop is an improv theatre in downtown Minneapolis. Several years ago, I participated in its 55+ improv class taught by theatre veteran Jim Robinson. A dozen students and I went through classic improv exercises, including spinning a tale one sentence at a time by saying “yes, and” before adding to the story.

The big lesson I took away about creativity from those classes is how vitally important the “yes, and” mindset is. Lately, I’ve come to realize that’s especially true when you’re looking for a job after 50.

Most of us, at work and at home, often respond to others with “yes, but,” pointing out what’s wrong with what we hear. The “yes, and” response instead encourages openness to new ideas and opportunities.