SelfEmployed.com Interview Questions: A Comprehensive Guide to Landing Your Dream Job

The Key Is To Overcome Suspicions About Why You Want A Job

By the Monster Career Coach

At any given point in time, approximately 12 to 18 percent of the Canadian workforce is self-employed. This mainly includes people who have started their own small business or are classified as “independent consultants. ”.

Being self-employed can be wonderfully fulfilling and liberating. But it can also go through wild swings and dangerous drops very quickly, usually a lot more than if you had a regular job.

Some people who have been self-employed for a while decide to sell or shut down their business and go back to working for someone else during one reason or another. When they do this, they might run into problems because employers might wonder why someone who was just living on their own now wants to work in a more structured environment.

Are you looking for a job after being self-employed? If so, here are some questions that employers usually ask. A few potential responses for each query are listed in bullet-point style. See which answers best apply to you personally. If you choose to use one of the suggested answers, make sure it fits your situation and tell the truth.

Interview Question 1: Why did you leave your self-employment?

Possible Answers:

• After being successful on my own, I realized I missed being on a real team and working with different people every day on a wide range of tasks.

• Now that I’ve done everything I set out to do, I want to share all that great experience as part of something much bigger than myself.

• While I wasn’t working a regular job, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability started to become more common in regular jobs. And I wouldn’t have left to go out on my own if these kinds of chances had been available at the time. This is where I really want to be.

Interview Question 2: What would be the benefit to me of hiring someone who’s been self-employed?

Possible Answers:

• When you’re by yourself, you learn how important it is to meet tight deadlines, please customers, and get a lot more done with little. That’s the level of creativity and hard work I can bring to the job you’re hiring for.

• When self-employed you get to wear many hats. One day you’re in charge of marketing and sales, and the next you’re making a budget, planning your work, and meeting with customers. I can now use all of these different skills to help your business grow and make more money.

Question 1: Do you really think you can work for someone else now that you’ve been self-employed and enjoyed the freedom that comes with it?

Possible Answers:

• Actually, when you’re self-employed you still work for bosses. Each customer or client is like a mini-boss. You need to know what each of them wants and need and then make things in a way that meets those needs.

• Please keep in mind that I worked well as an employee for years before I became self-employed. If you want them to, my old bosses will tell you straight out that I was a great worker and very loyal.

• As someone who had to make tough choices every day when I was by myself, I now understand how hard it must be for you as a boss. That stress is too much for you. I want to ease some of it off so you can concentrate on more important things.

There is a second question in the interview: How do I know you won’t just join my company, steal my customer list, and start your own business?

Possible Answers:

• You can be sure that I will never be a threat to you or your company because I am willing to sign a non-compete and a confidentiality agreement.

• I never really wanted to work for myself in the first place. I got the chance when I was laid off from a job I loved a few years ago. While I was looking for a new job, someone who knew how good I was at what I did offered me some contract work. It helped me pay my bills and got me more work for a while, but I always knew I’d be back at a daily job soon.

Interview Question 3: Do you consider yourself a failure because you’re not still self-employed?

Possible Answers:

• Quite the opposite. I believe I was brave and determined to quit a job that was pretty safe and start my own business…. If anything, I think I’m more valuable to an employer like you now than ever because of all the things I’ve learned and the sales I created during that time.

• I have to say that I didn’t fully succeed in some ways. But now I know that my real value is as someone who focuses on what I do best. When self-employed I was just plain spread too thin. There were things I wasn’t good at and small tasks like ordering supplies and collecting invoices that took too much of my time. I won’t have to do those things when I’m focused on doing the job you hired me for.

Reduce The Employer’s Doubts

You are being interviewed for a new job, and the company wants to know that you are not a “flight risk.” This means that you will not steal company secrets and client lists to start your own business. Also, they need to be sure that you can work with other managers who make decisions since you won’t be the boss anymore.

Getting a traditional job when moving from being self-employed is something that happens all the time. Your chances of success will go up if you can show an employer that you’ve grown from your time away from the mothership and that you want to be the best employee this boss could hire. Assist them in eliminating their concerns and you too can get back into a traditional role.

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