When you get invited to a job interview you will sit down with one or more people, you will get offered coffee and a copy of your application and resume will be resting on the table for reference.

They will ask you about your past jobs, because they want to know what accomplishments in the past define you.

No, they don’t.

The employer does not care at all what you did in the past. This sort of thinking is a trap and can make you fail your job interview.

But of course he is very interested in what you will be able to do in the future. Thus you should phrase your answers appropriately when being asked about past jobs.

A very common question might be, why you quit your last job. If you answer that, keep in mind that the meaning of the question is whether you will stay with the new company for a long time or if you’re constantly changing employers for some reason. If they decide that it’s not worth to get you on board and instruct you, because you will leave soon anyway, you won’t get the job. (Well, sometimes it’s common and encouraged. For example with managers that use the job rotation to get more experience and to extend their circle of contacts.)

If they ask you about sports teams in high school they might in fact be testing if you’re a team player or a loner that does not work well with other people.

While you can get too paranoid with those sort of interpretation, you should still keep in mind what job interviews are about:

The future.

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