What in particular interested you about our company?
Now, on one level this is a reasonable question. If you say: "I'm interested in this job because it's three blocks from my apartment," you might not be the world's best candidate. But the disingenuous, and therefore offensive, aspect of this question is that it assumes that you have unlimited job opportunities and have pinpointed this one because of some dazzling aspect of the role or the company.

I mean, please. Most of the job-seeking population is living on the lower two-thirds of Maslow's pyramid, where the most appealing thing about any job is that you got the darned interview. Why am I interested? Because you guys called me back. But you can't say that, so you have to rhapsodize about the company's wonderful products and services and the world-class management team and so on.

Now, it's important to show that you know a lot about the company. But you have lots of ways to demonstrate that in an interview (and lots of ways for the interviewer to ask you to do so) without pretending that the company had to fight every employer in town to get an audience with you. Everybody involved knows the company is shredding 10 times the number of résumés it's reading, so let's not pretend it was your breathtaking credentials that got you the interview. It was the fact that the company responded to your overture, unlike 90 percent of the employers you contacted.

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Below the director level or so, where it might be reasonable to assume you sought out the company for particular job-hunting attention, it's not necessary to pretend that you carefully chose it from a raft of others pursuing you. So unless you approached the outfit in the absence of a posted job opportunity, it's just silly to ask: "Why us?"

Rather, the interviewer can say: "When you saw our ad on Monster.com, what made you respond?" And, of course, the logical answer is: "Because I know I can do the job that was posted." Duh. No one said job-hunting was easy.

What would your past managers say about you?
This is a fine question, but it's not a true interview question. It's an intelligence question. It's like the question on one of those "honesty" tests that are becoming more and more popular in the hiring process (to add insult to injury, they're often called Personality Profiles): "Do you think it's O.K. to steal from your employer?"

These are intelligence questions because you have to have the intelligence to know the answer in order to be smart enough to go and get a job.

The trick here is to say something sufficiently witty or pithy to make you stand out from the crowd, because the standard answers are so tired: My managers would say that I'm hard-working, loyal, reliable, and a great team player. Snoozeville.

Why not try: My past managers would say that I was an outstanding individual contributor who also supported the team 100 percent. Or: My managers would say that I came up with breakthrough solutions while never losing track of the bottom line. You can probably dream up something better.

The point is, this is a softball: Don't think too much about it. It says more about the interviewer (who lacks the moxie to think up unique or penetrating questions) than it ever will about you.

The secret of good job interviewers is that they never ask traditional, dorky interview questions. They don't need to. They jump into a business conversation that does three powerful things in a one-hour chat:

a) Gets you excited about this opportunity (or, as valuably, makes it clear that you and this job are not a good fit)
b) Reveals to the interviewer how you'll fit into the role and the company, based on your background, perspective, temperament, and ideas
c) Gives you a ton of new information about the job, the management, the goals, the culture, and what life at this joint would be like.

If any of this doesn't happen, it's a problem. If you're lukewarm on the job when you leave the interview, or if you don't feel you've had a chance to show what you know and how you think, or — worst of all — if the interviewer used your time together to satisfy his need for more information about you while sharing almost nothing about the job, that's an enormous red flag.

And if you get called back for a second interview while you're still information-deprived, say so. "I'm interested in learning more about the opportunity before a second interview," you can say. "Would a phone call with the hiring manager be an effective way to help me get up to speed?" That kind of suggestion respects the hiring manager's time and won't waste yours on a second, no-new-data interview.

Try it. You might save yourself some aggravation — along with some extra time you can use to work on your five-year career plan and on tackling those pesky weaknesses of yours before the next interview.

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