How long should one's answers be in the interviews?f

[smthngintheway]

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Hey all,

So I'm practicing for my first interview this week and I was wondering what you guys feel is the appropriate length for given questions during the interview session.

Now obviously there are different types of questions which should elicit different types of answers of varying length but I can't help but feel that for certain likely questions such as "Why do you want to be a dentist" or "tell me about yourself," etc. the answer could be briefly stated under one minute or they could be expounded upon for a significant time of perhaps even five to ten minutes.

So my question is, for those types of questions, how long should you be aiming your answer to be? Again, for certain questions that can be answered sufficiently under a few minutes, the answers should obviously not extend to any significant amount of time, but for very big questions, when do you know if your talking too much?

 

[BobLoblawDDS]

It depends entirely upon the question, the interviewer, how comfortable you are, etc.

I always just answered honestly; I went with the flow and just spoke as much as I felt was comfortable or appropriate at that time. Never too little to not adequately answer the question, but never so much as to lose the interviewer's attention. Making it as conversational and interactive as possible is what you want. There are no guidelines.

I've had situational questions where I know I have to speak for like 4-6 minutes, and open-ended generic questions like "If you could choose one word to describe dentistry, what would it be?" that I can answer in about a minute. It all depends on the vibe I'm getting from my interviewers.

 

[hail2pitt]

So here's my opinion (obviously everyone else will probably have some other opinion soo pick the ones you like!)

I think you should stick to 2-3 minutes. Definitely being like "I like teeth" is not enough, but going on for 5 minutes or more, I feel is too much. They probably will ask follow up questions based upon what they want to hear more about. So, I got things like "Why dentistry?" and then based on my answer I got, "did you see that when you shadowed?" and based on that, I got "what was your favorite shadowing experience?"... so I like think of it as more of a conversation and just pretend that I'm talking to a friend!

 

[Jackson-Ave-Dental]

However long it takes to get the job done.

If it seems absurdly long then you are filling it in with junk.


Actually I modeled my interview after a classic power point presentation.

Their Question

My answer: Short hook/intro

• Point 1
• Point 2
• Point 3

I made sure to get my main points across in a concise manner but also keep in reserve, back up examples to support each point in case they ask about it. Having everything bullet pointed will let you fill in the gaps here and there as you see fit depending on the situation, in other words flexibility! It won't sound scripted either 😉