CAREER CENTER

Traditional Interview Questions

Can you answer all these questions off the top of your head? Can you do it in a way that will set your worth above other candidates?

The interviewer searches for personal profile keys to determine what type of person you really are. The following questions are designed to assess several of those key areas.

Energy

• Tell me how you organize your day?
• When do you do your best (worst) work?
• How many tasks do you like to tackle at one time?
• How many hours a day do you put into your work?
• What are good reasons to postpone things?

Communication Skills

• What is the worst communication problem you have experienced?
• Tell me about your preparation for and results of meetings you have been responsible for conducting.
• What kind of writing have you done? Give me an example. How do you approach it?
• How do you feel about the writing of reports as contrasted with collecting or analyzing the data?
• What report that you are currently preparing (or have recently prepared) is the most challenging? Why?
• How good are your listening skills? How do you know?

Creativity

• Can you think of a recent problem in which old solutions wouldn't work? How did you solve the problem?
• What is the most imaginative or innovative thing you have done?
• What kinds of problems have people recently called on you to solve? Tell me about what you devised?

Motivation for Work

• What personal factors do you consider most important in evaluating yourself or your success?
• Can you give me examples of work-related experiences that you felt were satisfying/dissatisfying?
• What aspect of your career excites you?
• What do you like best about your current/past job?
• What do you like least about your current/past job?
• Describe when you worked the hardest and felt the greatest sense of achievement.
• What are some recent responsibilities you have taken on? Why did you assume these responsibilities?
• What have you accomplished in the line of self-development during the past year?

Work Standards

• What are your standards of success?
• What do you consider the most important contribution you have made in your current position?
• How many times have you missed a deadline? What were the causes of each?

Leadership

• Tell me about a new idea which was considerably different from the standard procedure that you recently implemented.
• What approach did you take to get others to go along with the idea?
• Are there some situations where you did not follow the chain of command?

Sales Ability/Persuasiveness

• What was the best idea you ever sold to others? Why did the buy it?
• What was the best idea you tried to sell to others that was not accepted? Why wasn't it and what did you do?

Sensitivity

• What unpopular decision have you made? How did others respond? How did that make you feel?
• If you asked your peers to identify your greatest weakness, what would it be?
• How do you know they would respond that way?

Tenacity/Initiative

• What is a big obstacle you had to overcome to get where you are today? How did you overcome it?
• Describe an experience you have had in which you were too persistent? What happened?
• How could you have improved the outcome?
• Have you ever submitted a good idea to a superior and he/she did not take action on it? What did you do?
• Can you relate an experience in which you felt you gained something because you persisted for a length of time?
• Describe a situation where you gave your all but failed.
• How many projects have you started on your own this year? What prompted you to begin them?
• List some new ideas and suggestions that you have made.

Risk-taking

• Have you recently made a decision that was not yours to make? If yes, what was it? Why did you make it?
• Describe a situation in which you received a new procedure or instructions with which you disagreed. What did you do?
• What are the occasions in which you feel you must consult others before taking action?

Flexibility/Resilience

• How did you get around obstacles that prevented you from completing a project?
• Give examples of the two most difficult approaches you have ever used to accomplish a project.
• What was your biggest disappointment? How did you cope with it?
• How do you pick yourself up after a disappointment?

Planning/Organizing

• How do you schedule your time? Set priorities?
• What do you do when your time schedule is upset by unforeseen circumstances?
• What is the procedure in keeping track of matters requiring your attention?
• Describe how you determine what constitutes top priorities.
• What were your objectives for the last year? Were they achieved?

Judgement

• Can you give me two examples of good decisions you have made in the last six months? What were the alternatives?
• Why were they good decisions?
• What is the toughest decision you have had to make? Tell me about it.
• What alternative did you consider?
• What decision did you have to think the longest on before you decided what to do? Tell me about it.
• Why was it difficult?

Decisiveness

• What was the last major problem that you were confronted with? What action did you take on it?
• What was the last decision you faced? How long did it take for you to decide what to do?
• What kinds of decisions do you tend to make rapidly, and which ones do you take more time on? Give me some examples.