Sample Interview Questions
To find out how you will fit into an employer's organization, most interviewers will ask a combination of interview questions, including:
1. Situational Interview Questions
2. Qualification Questions
3. Politically Correct Questions / Commitment Questions
Situational Interview Questions
Situational Interview Questions help determine how you handle every day situations.
Here are a few examples that you may be asked.
- Goal Setting: How do you set goals? How do you achieve your goals? Give a specific example of a goal you set, and the results of that goal.
- Competition: Give an example of a competitive situation that you were in, and how you handled it.
- Persuasion: How do you persuade individuals to do things the way you feel they should be done? Give specific reasoning. Use facts.
- Challenges: How do you handle challenges? Give a specific challenge that you have faced in your life.
- Frustration: If you work with a co-worker that wasn't doing their job and you were frustrated by it, how would you handle the situation? Give a specific example of a time when you were frustrated.
- Team Work: Have you ever worked in an environment where teamwork really existed, and why do you think it worked? Do you prefer working with others or alone? I'm happy working alone, when necessary. I don't need constant reassurance, but I prefer to work in a group. So much more gets accomplished as a team.
- Negative Feedback: How do you handle negative feedback?
- College Grad: What was your GPA? Could you have done better, and how would you have achieved it?
Qualification Questions
Qualification questions help determine the types of skills you can bring to an employer.
- How do your managers, peers and subordinates perceive you collectively and separately?
- What type of role do you play in a team? What role do you prefer to play?
- Take me through a time when you took a product from inception to fruition.
- Take me through a project where you had to be creative to meet the customer's need.
- Describe how you work under tight deadlines. How is that different from other times?
- How have you overcome a manager's or supervisor's resistance to an idea of yours?
- What characteristics do you exhibit to show you have a good work ethic?
- How have you improved communication within your group?
- How do you motivate different personalities within your group?
- How have you created opportunity for yourself in your company?
- What are the most important characteristics in a job you're looking for and why?
- How have you handled a team member who wasn't pulling their weight on a project and you were the team leader?
- If you were a new person on a team, what things would you do to gain the respect and positioning within the group?
Politically Correct / Commitment Questions
Be careful to never say anything negative about anyone or any company.
Politically Correct / Commitment Questions include:
- What did you think of your last boss?
- Which qualifications do you feel make you a better candidate for this job than anyone else?
- How do you compare with your peers?
- Why our company?
- Tell me about your company.
