Questions Youll Be Asked At A Teaching Interview
Commonly asked interview questions you can anticipateplus tips and links to resources you can tap as you polish your answers.
Congratulations! Youve landed an interview appointment for a teaching position at a new school, or for a different position at your current school. This is an important first step, but there will likely be a number of qualified candidates vying for the same spothow can you distinguish yourself from the pack and land the job?
Your résumé, references, and professional portfolio will help, of course, but itll always be the impression you make during your face-to-face interview thatll get you hired. Luckily, there are only a few types of questions a teacher can be asked, so its completely possible to enter a teaching interview confident and prepared.
In addition to questions related to your content area, anticipate that youll be asked questions based on your knowledge of and experience with meeting the needs of the whole child. Be ready to explain how you honor and attend to the social, emotional, and academic growth of your studentsboth individually and as a group. And be prepared for questions concerning classroom management, teacher-student relationships, student engagement, and learning outcomes.
Here are the types of questions youll be asked, along with suggestions and links to resources to guide you in preparing your answers and in practicing citing specific strategies and relevant classroom anecdotes.
How Do You Handle A Challenge Give An Example
What They Want to Know: Regardless of your job, things may go wrong and it wont always be business as usual. With this type of question, the hiring manager wants to know how you will react in a difficult situation. Focus on how you resolved a challenging situation when you respond. Consider sharing a step-by-step outline of what you did and why it worked.
Using Car To Answer Behavioural Interview Questions
The golden rule when youre answering behavioural interview questions is to follow whats known as CAR: Context, Action, Result.
Context is about describing a situation and setting the scene for a relevant example from your past. The key here is to choose your example well one that clearly demonstrates the quality or skill the employer is asking about.
Action is about explaining what action you took. Be really specific rather than making vague statements and outline your steps and rationale.
Result is about detailing the outcome of your action. Offer specific facts relating to the result. For instance, quote figures and statistics, or feedback from your manager, that back up your assertion.
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Additional Interview Preparation Tips
And were finally here!
If you managed to get to this point, you definitely deserve a high-five!
Now, before we wrap up the article, lets go through a couple of essential tips on acing your interview
- Make sure youre prepared to answer all the common job interview questions. Wherever youre applying, youll likely be asked several of these questions.
- Think of the answers youll give for the situational interview questions . I.e. gap in your work experience, why were you fired, etc.
- Understand how to answer behavioral job interview questions. If you know how the STAR method works, this shouldnt be difficult at all.
- Follow basic interview etiquette. Make eye-contact with the interviewer, but polite, and so on.
And finally, good luck on the interview! You got this!
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What Do You See Yourself Doing In Five Years
This one is all about job commitment.
Some people make job hopping a career in of itself, and your answer here can be telling. Here, your interviewer is determining if you are:
- someone who sets goals
- someone who demonstrates commitment
- someone who is loyal
While no interviewer expects someone to stay at a company forever, try and craft your response in such a way that shows progression in your career, and alignment with the Companys needs and future. Again, self awareness is key your employer doesnt want to send you down an unwanted path, resulting in wasted time and energy for everyone.
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Give A Major Challenge You Havefaced In Risk Management How Did You Deal With It
Here,the interviewer seeks to know what you consider a challenge and whether you canhandle stressful and difficult situations.
Tip1: Provide a challenge that highlights your skills
Tip2: Briefly explain the action you took to win the challenge.
Sample Answer
During my last assignment, I managed risks relating to a software development project. Notably, the development team lacked programmers skilled in Java, and the business analyst had collected incomplete systems requirements. I managed to identify these issues early and began by liaising with the business analysis to get the missing requirements.
The business analyst contacted concerned stakeholders and was able to get all the requirements. About the development team, I engaged the team leader and the company leadership. I proposed outsourcing a Java expert, and that was accepted. Eventually, the expert was engaged during the development phase only. This move saved the company from the costs of employing a Java expert full-time. Thus, I eliminated the risks that could have occurred due to incomplete requirements and missing skills.
Do You Have High Emotional Intelligence
Having high emotional intelligence is very essential nowadays to get a job done. You cannot expect to do all your work based on the facts given to you by your employer. You may need to join ends on an emotional connection that you share with people.
Emotional intelligence helps you to form a relationship that is next to impossible if you are too uninterested to turn an ear to other peoples stories.
As employees, you are expected to build relationships based on sharing of stories and empathy that bring you closer to people. Without it, working becomes harder than usual since you wont be able to communicate with people except on a formal level which is not enough.
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Tips To Answer Teacher Interview Questions
During your teaching interview, you’ll need to do more than just give generic responses to the questions you’re asked. The best candidate will be able to explain how they are qualified for the job and why they would be a good fit for the school.
It makes it much easier for a hiring manager to make a decision when the applicant spells out why they would be a great hire.
Make It Personal: Take the time to personalize your responses to interview questions. Include highlights from your background, skills, and professional experience that are relevant to the job that youre applying for. Focus on skills most relevant to the field.
Here is a list of the teaching skills interviewers are most interested in. Of course, communication, organization, and critical thinking are high on the list of desired qualities. If you’re returning to the classroom after a career break, be prepared to address the gap in your experience.
Provide Examples: The interviewer will likely ask you behavioral interview questions, which require you to provide an example of how you did something. For instance, an interviewer might say, Tell me about a time you handled a behavioral issue with a student. These kinds of questions require you to think of examples from past teaching experiences. To answer these questions, explain the situation and what you did to either solve a problem or achieve success.
Then, describe the result.
How Do You Upgrade Or Downgrade A System With Near
You can upgrade or downgrade a system with near-zero downtime using the following steps of migration:
- Open EC2 console
- Launch an instance with the new instance type
- Install all the updates
- Test the instance to see if its working
- If working, deploy the new instance and replace the older instance
- Once its deployed, you can upgrade or downgrade the system with near-zero downtime.
Take home these interview Q& As and get much more. Download the complete AWS Interview Guide here:
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Give An Example Of When You Showed Leadership Qualities
Applying for a leadership position? Youll definitely get asked this behavioral interview question.
Keep in mind, though, that this question doesnt necessarily mean that you should have held a managerial position.
What the interviewer is asking for is a situation when you took the initiative and led a project or an initiative.
As an entry-level marketer, there was not much expected of me at SoftwareCompanyInc.. My main to-dos involved doing research, and completing whatever tasks were assigned to me.
During a content marketing brainstorming session, I came up with an awesome idea to market the company. The gist of it was, wed interview company clients who were very successful at using the software, create case studies on what exactly theyre doing, and include it in our email marketing strategy.
The Chief Marketing Officer loved the idea and put me in charge of executing the project, which I did with flying colors.
Why Did You Decide To Apply For This Position
Through this question, the interviewers want to assess how passionate you are for the position. And no, the answer isnt:
Well, Im very passionate about not starving to death.
Well, I needed the money, and you guys tend to pay a lot.
What the interviewer is looking for here is to see how passionate you are about the job or the company. After all, job performance is directly linked to job satisfaction. The happier you are about your position at the company, the more productive youll be.
And heres the kicker – your passion will be very evident during the interview.
When youre talking to a person thats passionate about something, you can pretty much feel them glow as they talk. And if youre an HR manager whos interviewed hundreds of people, this is a very good sign to hire the candidate.
So, use this knowledge to your advantage.
When asked this question, your answer should include 2 things:
Im very passionate about sustainability and renewable energy. In fact, I minored in Environmental Science at .
Ive always wanted to put my engineering degree to a good cause – and the position as a Sustainability Coordinator at is just the right thing.
Ive been following your company for the past few years, and I love how youre changing the renewable energy landscape in America.
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What Gives You Mental Satisfaction
This is a very common question that you can expect to be asked by the interviewers. This is considered as a very important question for all candidates since inner peace is so hard to find.
Even so, there has to be at least one thing or activity that makes you feel light in the head or relieves you from the onslaught of worrying thoughts. This is important because many a time in life, you will have to toil with matters that have gone out of hand.
And having the means to find mental satisfaction is what will matter the most at the hardest of time. That is why the interviewers have to make sure that they are putting their work in the hands of a person who knows what he/she is doing.
Do You Have Any Interests Outside Of Work
If the interviewer asks you this question, take it as a good sign!
It means that they liked your professional background, and now theyre just trying to get to know you and see if youre a good fit for the company culture.
Its pretty hard to go wrong here, unless youre going to answer something like:
I have literally no hobbies.
or…
All I do is play video games all day.
Just talk about your hobbies and interests, and youre all set!
Bonus points if you can mention something thats also relevant to your job .
- Sample Answer 1
Im a big fan of creative writing. I have my own personal short-story blog, and contribute actively to several online writing communities .
Oh, and Im also a huge fan of the New York Giants.
- Sample Answer 2
Well, Im very interested in all sorts of sports. I like to keep active, as it really helps keep me productive. Over the past 2 years, Ive done a bit of everything – fencing, archery, hiking, and several other things.
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What Do You Think Our Company/organization Could Do Better
Well, this ones interesting!
While not too common for most organizations, its a favorite amongst tech companies.
How come? Well, answering this question shows a couple of things
- That youre really passionate about the organization, and have done your research
- Are not afraid of giving feedback
Obviously, you should be very political about your feedback. You cant just say that:
Well, a lot of things really. Im not enjoying this interview right here, for example.
And your product kinda sucks, no offense. But hey, theres always room for improvement, am I right?
Instead, you want to show off the research youve done. Talk about anything that might seem off about their product or business:
I actually went through your resume builder before coming to the interview, and found several things that seemed kinda counter-intuitive.
Not to say that its too hard to understand, or something, but it took me a while to figure out some stuff.
If you want, I can open up my laptop and show you what I mean.
What Is Self Assessment
The process of self-assessment includes honestly answering a number of questions that are important to help you judge your characteristic set of skills that show your readiness for the life ahead.
However, at a self-assessment interview, the interviewers will not ask questions that highlight your positive aspects but also the negative aspects that you have to overcome for best results.
The questions for self-evaluation are usually based on your development as a character. It is basically to test you out on the clearness of thought and honest idea about the self or it is a basic self-assessment test.
The following self-evaluation questions for employees generally asked and their answers are, what people should expect to weigh themselves on in the general affair of things.
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Imagine Youre Working On A Project With A Tight Deadline And A Team Member Is Behind Schedule With A Critical Deliverable You Need To Move Forward What Would You Do
EXAMPLE ANSWER:
First, I would reach out and touch base with my colleague. Its possible its a simple oversight or a technical error like a message stuck in an email outbox. They may also be dealing with a crisis that caused a delay.
In any case, my goal is to gather information, not be accusatory. I would learn more about the situation, then work with them to find a resolution. For instance, if a high-priority emergent task prevented them from handling the project-related work, Id see if I could provide assistance with either of the responsibilities.
If it simply fell off of their radar, Id ask if they could complete the work in a timely fashion, such as one or two days. Then, Id prepare to follow up after that amount of time passes, suggesting I didnt hear back from them beforehand.
Define And Explain The Three Basic Types Of Cloud Services And The Aws Products That Are Built Based On Them
The three basic types of cloud services are:
- Computing
- Storage
- Networking
Here are some of the AWS products that are built based on the three cloud service types:
Computing – These include EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda, Auto-Scaling, and Lightsat.
Storage – These include S3, Glacier, Elastic Block Storage, Elastic File System.
Networking – These include VPC, , Route53
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Assume All Questions Matter
When taking an assessment, it may sometimes appear certain questions are highly subjective or purely opinion-based in nature. You might see questions about your life goals or the way you spend your free time. Even these questions have answers that can help you convey your merits as a candidate. Work on the assumption every answer you give is important and you can give the best impression to the company assessing you.
Some companies may look for particular personality types. They may want to know about your work ethic or how strong your online presence may be. They do this to check how well you might fit into your applied role. Be honest when answering questions that cover these topics but also choose your words with care. The often open-ended nature of these questions can give you an opportunity to distinguish yourself from other candidates. Consider what information that applies to the question might be of significant interest to the company interviewing you.
Who Performs A Risk Assessment
Here,the interviewer wants to know if you are well-informed about risk assessment.
Tip1: Provide a clear answer concerning who takes the responsibility of assessingrisk
Tip 2: Familiarize yourself with risk assessment questions. Make sure not to leave any important point.
Sample Answer
The responsibility of carrying out a risk assessment is vested on a risk manager by an employer or institution. A risk manager has relevant skills, experience, and knowledge to lead risk assessment successfully. This involves systematic identification and evaluation of risks in a workplace. The risk manager works with heads of other departments to ensure that an organization-wide risk assessment is conducted successfully.
Besides, the risk manager should collaborate with project teams and use avenues such as a risk workshop to discuss and brainstorm about risk assessment. This will help to come up with a list of risks and undertake assessment for each of the teams.
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What Is The Professional Achievement Youre Most Proud Of
This is another version of the Why should we hire you question, but with a focus on one very specific achievement.
This ones pretty straightforward, just mention your #1 professional achievement and youre good to go.
As a given, the achievement has to be related to the job youre applying for. Lets say youre applying for the position of Sales Manager:
Im very good at underwater basket-weaving, having woven 20+ baskets in the past year.
In my previous sales position, I managed to hit and exceed department KPIs by 50%+ for 6 months in a row
Keep in mind, though, that you want to be very specific with your answer. To get this right, try using the STAR method. It goes something like this:
S: Situation – Set the scene and context.
T: Task – Describe what your challenge or responsibility was.
A: Action – List and dwell on all the actions you took towards addressing the challenge or responsibility.
R: Result – Explain what the outcomes were and how they fit with the overall goal of the project or company.
So, find a work-related achievement that showcases your contribution through your skills and experience to something that matters to the company.
- Sample Answer 1:
My biggest achievement is the fact that I went from being an intern to managing company Xs entire marketing over 2 years.
My first success was getting an article to go viral, generating over $5,000 revenue in a single day. While thats not much for a software company, it felt like a lot for an intern.
