Questions Often Asked in Employment Interviews
Given below are some questions that
may be generally asked by job offering organizations
to job seekers to evaluate them on soft competencies:
Sample Questions:
• Tell us about an important
assignment you handled. How did you manage it and what were
the results?
• How do you set up the priorities
for your day-to-daywork?
• If any of your projects derails,
goes behind schedule, how do you pull it up to bring it
back on track?
• What is more important to you;
processes or results? What ever is your answer, why do
you think it that way?
• Can you give an example of any
process improvements you achieved recently and what was
its impact on various factors?
• Why do you think re-engineering
of processes fail many times? Do you think one should not
re-engineer but go gradual on improvements?
• How do you rate yourself as a
result-focused person and why?
• Are you a deadline and timeline
conscious person and how do you make sure that they are
met?
• Do you like to take the
challenges involved in fire fighting or would you rather be
more cautious and eliminate such emergencies?
• Have you worked on any
cross-functional project? What were your experiences on it as
compared to a purely internal or departmental project?
• Do you believe in internal
customer care concept? Would you still help the
next-in-line department if because of your cooperation it is
going to steal the show? Do you recall any such
example from your past experience?
• Do you have at the back of your
mind somewhere the requirements of you ultimate
external customers? Does your approach to work get guided by
it? Can you
illustrate the point in light of
your experience so far?
• How do you rate yourself as a
decision maker? Can you describe any decision making
situation where you were at cross roads; a dilemma
situation, and you came out as a winner?
• Tell us about a situation where
you goofed in decision making? How did you handle it then?
• Can you construct your decision
making process and share with us? Take your time to
think and then tell us.
• Are you the type of person who
wishes to have a 100% correct decision and in the process
may miss out on timelines or budget limits etc or will
you take a chance to meet the other factors? In either
case, tell us why?
• Suppose you take a considered
decision in a situation where others are shying away from
any commitment but it is important to take decision
and it backfires. Do you display courage, own it and face
the consequences or do you manipulate an apology or play a
blame game or play politics and get scot-free?
• Continuing from the earlier
question, then, what is right in a hierarchical formal
organizational situation where every one's authority areas are
earmarked, yet decisions are not forthcoming?
• Can you confidently communicate
with your superiors your professional ideas? Do the
persons high up in the organization hierarchy intimidate
you?
• If you are confident and at ease
in dealing with superiors, what have you done to
build up this kind of confidence?
• How do you update your knowledge
and skills? Do you have any specific approach to it?
Can you elaborate it?
• Describe your problem solving
process.
• Which do you prefer, attend to
the problem and give an immediate short term solution so
that things move on or would you wait on solving the
problem until you have eliminated it from the grass root
level?
• While coming out with solution to
a complex and repetitive problem do you keep the
financial and other constraints always in mind or do
you aim at a solution irrespective of the constraints and
try to achieve a permanent solution even at the cost
of extra investments? Either way, what are
your arguments?
• Do you encourage participation of
your team members or do you push your decisions
through them? Provide some examples to illustrate your
style.
• In building consensus on a
solution to a complex problem, have you faced any
difficulties? What were they? How do you manage?
• Do you see the conflicts in your
day-to-day work among the people and of people with you?
What is your conflict management style?
• Can you describe your conflict
handling process? Give an example.
• Do you lose your cool or get
angry or frustrated when you get into a conflict with some
one? How do you act?
• Did you ever have significant
difference of opinion with your boss? What was it? How did you
deal with it?
• Has it ever happened with you
when your basic values were put to test in an
organizational situation?What did you do?
• In your previous jobs, did you
work with great teams? Give an example and why do you
consider that to be a great team? What was your role and
contribution in making it so?
• What are your proposals for
development of people working for you? Have you tried
some of them?
• How do you compare the training
effectiveness of the class-room programs and the
on-the-job training programs?
• What are your leadership
qualities? Do people work for you with enthusiasm by taking
initiatives? Then, you must also be delegating lots?
• Sometimes it happens that if you
work for perfection or 100% quality, you may lose an
opportunity, time is of essence. Would you rather push an
imperfect product or solution so as to make the most of
the opportunity? What is you take on it?
• Are you a good implementer, an
action person? Are you also a good thinker and planner?
What is more important for you? Why?
• Can you narrate the problems you
faced in implementing any solution that you
recently introduced?
How did you tackle them?
• Tell us something where you
applied your creativity and met with a breakthrough.
• What kind of creativity systems
or techniques do you use with your team?
• Do you encourage borrowed or
copied creativity or you only appreciate something
originally done? Why?
• Can you sell your concept, ideas
and solutions to others who matter? Share your experience
with us on this.
• How do you rate yourself as a
presenter? Are your presentations appreciated by your
audience? Can you tell us the kind of feedback you
get from them on your presentation?
• Do you have any experience of
conducting or coordinating the meetings, either
in a room or using teleconferencing facilities? Give
one such example and how did the meeting go on various
counts?
• You have been assigned a project
but you have not been given a clear picture of it; its
pretty hazy. Can you still proceed and complete it? Did you do
something like this in your earlier jobs?
• In the event when some
information is just not available, does the lack of information
bother you? Can you work in ambiguous situations?
Do you have such an experience to share with us?
• Are you open enough to share your
part of information in a team situation or in a cross
functional project? Perhaps keeping that information up
your sleeve till emergencies arise can be a way to
gain importance. Your comments?
• Are you a person who first sees
the big picture of things and then go into details or do you
do it the other way round? Can you give an example from
your work situation?
Related Book
"Competency Management (Competency Matrix and Competencies)": You may like to order online your copies of the book from Amazon.
