Sample Interview Questions

Introduction Questions

These questions may be used to relax the candidate and elicit some general information.

  1. Did you find us okay?
  2. Tell us a little about yourself.
  3. What relevant experience do you have for this position?
  4. What aspects of your present job do you consider most crucial?
  5. What aspects of your current job do you enjoy most/least?
  6. Why do you wish to change your job at this time?
  7. From what you know about our company and this job, why are you interested in working for us?
  8. Why should I offer you this job?
  9. What is your general impression of your last company?

Behavioral Questions

These are specific questions, designed to elicit specific information on behavioral traits. So, for example, if you require a person to have ‘adaptability’, then you should ask an appropriate question or questions from the adaptability category below relevant to the position being applied for.

Please ensure that all candidates for same position are asked the same questions.

Team Building

  1. How have you ensured that your team clearly understood the team’s goals and objectives?
  2. Describe how you’ve worked with a team to set specific and measurable team goals and objectives. What process did you use?
  3. Accomplishment of team goals requires that all team members fulfill their responsibilities. Tell me about what you’ve done to help clarify a specific team member’s roles and responsibilities.
  4. There are many obstacles that can hinder the accomplishment of team goals. Describe a time when you were unable to remove obstacles so your team could progress toward goal achievement.
  5. Teams sometimes get off track when working toward a specific goal. Describe a time when you were unable to help your team get back on track. What did you do?
  6. Tell me about a specific team of which you were a member when you involved other team members in team decisions and actions. What was your approach?

Decision Making

  1. What was one of the most difficult or complex directives you have ever had to implement? Explain how you approached the task.
  2. Describe a situation in which you had to weigh options for translating a broad or general directive from senior management into specific plans. Explain what you did and why.
  3. Describe a time when you had to establish priorities to implement a new vision or directive. What information did you use or obtain to determine the priorities.
  4. What types of information have you used for your career search? How have you used the information? What have you learned?
  5. Walk me through a situation when you have had to get information by asking a lot of questions of several people. How did you know what to ask?
  6. Give me an example of a good decision you made recently. What were the alternatives you considered? Why was it a good decision?
  7. What kinds of decisions are most difficult for you?

Leadership

  1. Have you ever been in a situation in which you had to motivate others to take actions to support a major reorganization? How did you do that?
  2. What strategies have you used to communicate a major new directive of senior management to employees? Which strategies have worked and which have not?
  3. What strategies have you used to make the organization’s vision and values meaningful to others? Which strategies have worked and which have not?
  4. Tell me about an occasion when in difficult circumstances you pulled the team together.

Ability to Lead Meetings

  1. Tell me about the most productive meeting you have led. What made it so productive?
  2. We’ve all led meetings that weren’t as productive as we needed them to be. Tell me about a time this happened to you when you were leading a meeting. What accounted for the meeting’s lack of success?
  3. Tell me about a time when you led a task force or a committee meeting. What actions did you take to ensure the productivity of the meeting?
Planning & Organizing
  1. How have you kept track of the schedules of others with whom you’ve needed to coordinate work?
  2. Tell me about a time when you had to coordinate other people’s schedules and activities to accomplish a complex project.
  3. Describe a time when you managed a project and it was your responsibility to determine assignments, schedules and milestones.

Delegating Responsibility

  1. How have you decided (1) what to delegate and (2) to whom? Give me an example of a situation in which you’ve applied these guidelines.
  2. Have you ever asked someone to fill in for you at a meeting or presentation? Tell me about one of those situations.
  3. Sometimes it’s difficult to know how much direction to provide when delegating. Tell me about a time when you didn’t provide enough instruction or guidance for a delegated project/task/assignment. How and when did you find out that things weren’t going well?

Facilitating Change

  1. Describe a time when you helped a group of employees understand why a specific change (in process, procedure, policy, etc.) was necessary. What was the change? What did you do?
  2. What strategies have you used to encourage others to challenge established business assumptions?
  3. Describe a time when you were responsible for helping a group of individuals understand a new way of thinking about problems and opportunities. What did you do?

Performance Management

  1. Tell me about a recent performance review you’ve conducted with an employee. Describe what happened before, during, and after the review.
  2. Tell me about a time when you worked with an employee to identify opportunities for development. What process did you use?
  3. Give me an example of how you have involved employees in identifying performance goals and expectations? What was your role? What was the individual’s role?

Information Monitoring

  1. How have you kept informed of what is going on in your area of responsibility? Give me an example.
  2. Tell me how you have determined which areas within your department need to be monitored.
  3. Tell me about a project or task you have managed and how you have kept track of (monitored) its progress.
  4. Tell me about a complex problem you have come across in your previous job/at school. How did you deal with it?
Innovation & Creativity
  1. Tell me about how you have worked with others to develop new and creative ideas to solve business problems.
  2. Describe how you have improved the productivity/profitability of your work unit. How did you identify these opportunities for improvement?
  3. Give me an example of a time when you were able to apply existing knowledge in a new way in order to solve a problem.
  4. Tell me about a time when you came up with a new method/idea. How did you go about trying to get it approved and implemented?
Conflict Management
  1. What was the most difficult conflict situation in which you’ve been involved? How did you go about trying to resolve the conflict? What was your role?
  2. Resolving conflict usually involves clarifying the issues. Tell me about a time when you collected information to help clarify issues and resolve a conflict.
  3. It’s sometimes difficult to separate issues from personalities. Tell me about a time when personal issues (yours or another’s) got in the way of resolving a conflict.

Stress Tolerance

  1. Every job has its stressors. What was the most stressful aspect of your job at? Why? How did you react to this?
  2. Customers can be challenging at times. Describe one of the most stressful interactions you had with an internal/external customer. How did you react?
  3. To what extent have you had to work in a very unpleasant work conditions (heat, dust, noise etc.)? Give me an example of when you worked under these conditions. How did you cope?

Adaptability

  1. Going from school to college/to work can be a dramatic change. Tell me about a particular challenge you had when you made this transition.
  2. Tell me about a situation when you had to adjust quickly to a significant change in organizational, department, or team priorities. How did the change affect you? What did you do?
  3. Working with people from diverse backgrounds can be challenging. Tell me about a time when you faced a significant challenge working with people from different types of organizations? What did you do? What was the result?
  4. Tell me about a situation when you had to adjust quickly to a significant change in organizational, department, or team priorities. How did that change affect you? What did you do?
  5. New processes and procedures can be disruptive. What actions have you taken when asked to significantly change a work process or procedure? What were the results?
  6. We all have to make changes when the way we’ve been doing things is no longer effective. Tell me about a time when you’ve had to try a new approach to a task/project/ assignment. What did you do? What were the results?

Follow-up

  1. How have you kept track of tasks/assignments that were someone else’s responsibility but affected your productivity? Give me a specific example.
  2. Have you ever been responsible for keeping track of progress on someone else’s projects/work? Give me an example. What did you do?
  3. Have you ever had to contact peers/team members/others in the organization to be sure tasks were completed on time? Tell me about one of those situations.

Initiating Action

  1. Have you made any cost-saving suggestions to your manager/supervisor/team leader? Give me an example. Was it accepted? What action was taken to get it accepted?
  2. How did you get your position with?
  3. Describe some ways you changed your job at. What prompted you to make those changes?

Coaching

  1. Tell me about what you’ve done to help a peer/team member to understand what knowledge/skill areas need to be strengthened. Give me a specific example.
  2. Tell me about how you’ve helped a peer/team member to become more successful as a result of your assistance/coaching. What process did you use to assist/coach him/her?
  3. Give me an example of a time when you gave feedback to reinforce the effective performance of someone who worked for you.
  4. Give me an example of the feedback you gave to someone you were coaching who was having difficulty with an assigned task.
  5. We’ve all had a time when our coaching efforts weren’t successful. Tell me about a time when you worked with someone, but they failed to improve.
  6. Describe how you coached two different people to accomplish a comparable task. What similarities and differences were there in your approaches?

Work Standards

  1. In your position with ……………, how did you define doing a good job? Did you do a good job? How did you know? Give me an example.
  2. Describe a situation when you discovered that your work was not up to your manager/supervisor/team leader or the company’s expectations. What happened? What action did you take?
  3. We’re not always satisfied with our performance. Tell me about the most memorable time that you weren’t pleased with your performance. What did you do about it?

Managing Work

  1. Tell me about a time when you were faced with conflicting priorities. How did you determine what was a top priority in scheduling your time?
  2. What procedures have you used to prevent or control backlog in your work area? Describe a specific instance when you needed to do this.
  3. Describe how you have organized materials so that you could find them when someone needed from you?
  4. What procedure have you used to keep track of items that need your attention? Tell me about a time when you used that procedure.
  5. How did you divide your time between your areas of responsibility?
  6. How do you normally plan you day?

Quality Orientation

  1. Tell me about a time that you had to make arrangements for an off-site meeting or conference. How did you keep track of all the details associated with the event? What happened?
  2. Sometimes it’s more important to get a letter/document out on time rather than to take the time to check everything in it. Tell me about a time you sent out a letter/document without verifying the accuracy of everything in it. What happened?
  3. At times we’ve all been too busy to check all the details of a project. Tell me about a time that this happened to you and some errors slipped through. What happened?
  4. When working on a repetitive task, it’s easy to lose concentration and miss important details that could cause problems later. Give me an example of a time when this happened to you.
  5. When working on a project or task over a long period of time, it can be difficult to maintain awareness of errors, omissions, or defects that might occur as the project/task progresses. Tell me about a time you worked on a lengthy task/project and something like this slipped through the cracks. What happened?

Contributing to Team Success

  1. Teams are comprised of a variety of people, some more involved than others. Tell me about a time when you encouraged a less active team member to get more involved. What did you do and why?
  2. Teams are comprised of a variety of people with diverse perspectives. Tell me about a time when you encouraged others to share their ideas. What did you do and why?
  3. Tell me about specific tasks you’ve completed that have directly contributed to your team’s goal accomplishment.

Building Customer Loyalty