How To Answer Job Interview Questions

Describe A Situation In Which You Disagreed With A Rule Or Policy And How You Handled It

In previous positions, you may have encountered guidelines that you didnt feel comfortable following. This question allows you to explain why or why not you would perform assigned tasks even when you disagree with the rule or policy related to the duty.

To answer this question, provide an example of a rule or policy that you disagreed with, how you expressed your disagreement and how you reconciled the disagreement to ensure you could perform your duties as assigned.

Example: In one of my previous jobs, the human resources director wanted to capture personal identifying informationsuch as social security numberson job applications. He was insistent that the information would be secure, and though I believed him, I still disagreed with this practice. I understood that human resources needed to collect this information at the point of hire to verify employment eligibility, but I did not agree with collecting it from every applicant.

I expressed my opinion that requiring this information on the application could negatively impact our talent pool, but also acknowledged that I was not a human resources professional and it was not my decision. The human resources director acknowledged my opinion, but believed it was the best practice. I trusted him as the experienced professional to make the correct choice.

What Are Three Positive Things Your Last Boss Would Say About You

It’s time to pull out your old performance appraisals and boss’s quotes to answer the question, “What are three positive things your last boss would say about you?”. This is a great way to brag about yourself through someone else’s words: “My boss has told me that I am the best designer he has ever had. He knows he can rely on me, and he likes my sense of humor.”

Why Do You Want To Leave Your Current Job

Let’s start with what you shouldn’t say .

Don’t talk about how your boss is difficult. Don’t talk about how you can’t get along with other employees. Don’t bad-mouth your company.

Instead, focus on the positives a move will bring. Talk about what you want to achieve. Talk about what you want to learn. Talk about ways you want to grow, about things you want to accomplish explain how a move will be great for you and for your new company.

Complaining about your current employer is a little like people who gossip: If you’re willing to speak badly of someone else, you’ll probably do the same to me.

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What Are Your Weaknesses

Sharing your weaknesses shows that you are self-aware. Be honest about how you have worked through challenging experiences. If possible, include how you’ve improved on these over time.

Example:Earlier in my career, I was so enthusiastic about my work that I would say yes’ when I should have been saying no.’ Being overwhelmed, the stress affected my production quality. I started using workload management tools to tailor more realistic goals.’

What Are Your Hobbies And Interests

Continuing our series of common interview questions and answers, next we look at ‘what are your hobbies’ example answers. When put on the spot, selecting your hobbies and interests that are simultaneously work-appropriate and not too vague can present a real challenge – especially under time pressure.

We dive into why employers ask the question, the difference between hobbies and interests, loads of example answers and what to avoid when answering!

How to answer what are your hobbies and interests

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Tricky Interview Questions And How To Answer Them

Don’t let your job search ride on a piece of paper.

Yes, it’s important to craft a strong, accurate resume but like it or not, most jobs are secured or lost in the interview stage. Don’t let your job search ride on a piece of paper.

I never saw a resume — and only a resume — get a job. That’s why you should put as much effort as possible into preparing for interviews than you do into any other part of your job search campaign.

While there are no perfect answers, some thought and discussion about potentially tricky interview subjects can help you avoid disaster. Here is a sampling of interview questions that tend to trip up job candidates.

What salary are you looking for?

Whenever possible, I suggest that candidates not provide a specific answer to this question until the negotiations phase, after a position has already been offered. To defer the discussion, try returning the focus back to the interviewer and noting: Its hard to discuss salary without knowing more about the job or responsibilities.

Or, if you are discussing a specific job: What is your range? Then relate your experience to the salary range without being precise: I think my experience would put me near the high end of your range, dont you?

What were you making in your last job?

Have you ever been fired?

Can you work under pressure?

What did you think of your last supervisor?

What is your greatest strength?

What is your greatest weakness?

Youve moved around a lot how long would you stay with us?

What Percentage Of Employees Was Brought In By Current Employees

Employees who love their jobs naturally recommend their company to their friends and peers. The same is true for people in leadership positions — people naturally try to bring on board talented people they previously worked with. They’ve built relationships, developed trust, and shown a level of competence that made someone go out of their way to follow them to a new organization.

And all of that speaks incredibly well to the quality of the workplace and the culture.

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How Do You Deal With Pressure Or Stress

How to Answer: The short answer you want to give is: Well. While you probably dont want to literally say that, the idea is to convey competence to deal with difficulty and hopefully pressure is not a problem for you. Frankly, this question tends to come with high-pressure, stressful jobs or companies and they want to know whether youll be able to handle tough situations.

Hopefully, you have self-selected into this kind of job and applied to the company and role with your eyes open about those realities and believe you can thrive in an environment that demands a lot of you.

Example: I tend to work well under pressure. Deadlines are put in place for a reason, and I appreciate an organized flow of work.

Tell Me About A Challenge Or Conflict Youve Faced At Work And How You Dealt With It

Youre probably not eager to talk about conflicts youve had at work during a job interview. But if youre asked directly, dont pretend youve never had one. Be honest about a difficult situation youve faced . Most people who ask are only looking for evidence that youre willing to face these kinds of issues head-on and make a sincere attempt at coming to a resolution, former recruiter Richard Moy says. Stay calm and professional as you tell the story , spend more time talking about the resolution than the conflict, and mention what youd do differently next time to show youre open to learning from tough experiences.

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How Do You Prioritise Your Work

The employer wants to know whether you’re organised, can meet deadlines and are able to handle multiple projects at the same time. The best way to answer this question is to provide examples of times when you’ve juggled a number of different tasks and still delivered them to a high quality and on time. These examples can come from previous jobs, university study or your extra-curricular activities. Give some detail about what methods you use to keep track of your progress and productivity.

How Do You Evaluate Success

What They Want to Know: Your answer to this question will give the interviewer a sense of your work ethic, your career goals, and your life goals. Tailor your response to fit what you expect to achieve if you were to be hired by this employer.

When I wake up each morning enthusiastic about going to work, then lock the clinic at night knowing that weve made a difference in peoples lives, I figure the day has been a success.

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How Did You Learn About The Opening

Job boards, general postings, online listings, job fairs — most people find their first few jobs that way, so that’s certainly not a red flag.

But a candidate who continues to find each successive job from general postings probably hasn’t figured out what he or she wants to do — and where he or she would like to do it.

He or she is just looking for a job often, any job.

So don’t just explain how you heard about the opening. Show that you heard about the job through a colleague, a current employer, by following the company–show that you know about the job because you want to work there.

Employers don’t want to hire people who just want a job they want to hire people who want a job with their company.

Tell Me About Yourself

This question seems simple, so many people fail to prepare for it, but its crucial. Here’s the deal: Dont give your complete employment history. Instead, give a pitchone thats concise and compelling and that shows exactly why youre the right fit for the job. Muse writer and MIT career counselor Lily Zhang recommends using a present, past, future formula. Talk a little bit about your current role , then give some background as to how you got there and experience you have thats relevant. Finally, segue into why you wantand would be perfect forthis role.

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Follow The Star Interview Method

STAR interviewing refers to a method of answering a question with a clear outlining of a situation, task, action, and result.² This method helps to produce a logical and easily understandable answer in the context of your experience. So, if you are posed with the question Can you tell me about a mistake youve made on the job and how you handled it?, you might respond with the following:

Situation: Our Yelp! Reviews started gradually declining last year, and so our manager told us to start paying much closer to the way customers interacted with us towards the end of their meals.

Task: On one particular occasion, I asked a customer how his meal was, and he politely said fine. However, I could tell something was wrong, so I wanted to see what I could do.

Action: I asked the customer if there was something else I could do for him, and after a brief hesitation, he mentioned he has received the wrong side dish with his order. Unable to fix it at that point, I apologized, then asked my manager if I could send the guest home with a free dessert and a coupon for his next visit. My manager approved, and I presented him with the gifts and apologized again.

Conflict Interview Questions And Answers

Conflict interview questions are questions designed to assess how you respond to and resolve conflict in the workplace. Employers ask these questions to get an idea of how well you work under and manage stress as well as your ability to professionally and respectfully resolve conflict with others. Here are five questions about conflict that an interviewer may ask:

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Question: How Do You Explain Your Gap In Employment

Ive dedicated a whole article to this topic . The bottom line is you should make sure to paint a picture that you were productive, improving yourself, helping family, or something constructive.

Hiring managers dont want to hear that you felt it was time for a long-awaited break from the rat-race. Or time to recharge your batteries. The first thought that will pop into their heads: When is your next break coming? Probably in the middle of a big project were working on.

What Is Your Greatest Weakness

What They Want to Know: There are different ways to tackle questions about weaknesses. One is to turn a negative into a positive by sharing an example of how something you considered to be a weakness actually helped you on the job. The other is to speak about additional skills you now have because you worked on those that needed an upgrade.

Im an introvert, which I used to regard as being a weakness because I was always shy about reaching out to people. However, part of being an introvert is that Im a great listener, and I find this has really helped me as a Help Desk Technician. Im able to focus on our customers issues, ask the right questions to elicit information, and resolve their tech issues.

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Are You Willing To Relocate

While this may sound like a simple yes-or-no question, its often a little bit more complicated than that. The simplest scenario is one where youre totally open to moving and would be willing to do so for this opportunity. But if the answer is no, or at least not right now, you can reiterate your enthusiasm for the role, briefly explain why you cant move at this time, and offer an alternative, like working remotely or out of a local office. Sometimes its not as clear-cut, and thats OK. You can say you prefer to stay put for xyz reasons, but would be willing to consider relocating for the right opportunity.

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What Skills Would You Bring To The Job

While this is similar to questions like, Why should we hire you? or What can you bring to the company? it allows you to be more specific about your work ethic, style and unique abilities as it relates to the role.

An impactful answer will discuss your hard and soft skills and use the STAR method to illustrate how your unique skills might benefit the team or organization.

Example answer:I can make anyone feel comfortable in a new environment, which makes me a good fit as a human resources assistant. In my previous position, a new employee came to me and told me that she didnt think she was right for the company culture. After talking to her for a few minutes, we realized that she felt too much pressure to participate in company events. I started introducing events that involved fewer competitions and more casual environments, and she quickly grew more comfortable with her team.

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What The Interviewer Wants To Know

Upon first hearing this question , you might think that the hiring manager wants to learn more about what you want in your next job. To some extent, this is true the employer definitely has to ascertain whether your career goals are aligned with the organizations needs.

However, this question is actually more about gauging how much you know about the company, its mission, and its operations. Its basically just a different way of asking, Why do you want to work here? The interviewer wants to know if you have taken the initiative to learn about the company and to think about what attracts you to working for them.

What Are Your Strengths

Pick three or four attributes desired by the employer in the person specification, such as teamwork, leadership, initiative and lateral thinking. Whichever strengths you pick, you must be able to evidence them with examples.

Similar questions include:

• How would a friend describe you?
• How would you describe your personality?
• What are three positive things your last boss would say about you?

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Are You Interviewing Anywhere Else

If you’re not interviewing elsewhere, does that decrease your value? And if you reveal every detail of companies and roles you’ve been applying to, are you breaking any rules?

Check out these ‘are you applying for other jobs’ best answers, where we have broken the interview question down, with model answers for if you’re interviewing for jobs in other industries, if you are interviewing for competitors and if you’re not interviewing anywhere else at all.

How to answer are you interviewing anywhere else

Whats Your Work Style

When an interviewer asks you about your work style, theyre probably trying to imagine you in the role. How will you approach your work? What will it be like to work with you? Will you mesh well with the existing team? You can help them along by choosing to focus on something thats important to you and aligns with everything youve learned about the role, team, and company so far. The question is broad, which means you have a lot of flexibility in how you answer: You might talk about how you communicate and collaborate on cross-functional projects, what kind of remote work setup allows you to be most productive, or how you approach leading a team and managing direct reports. Just try to keep it positive. And remember, telling a story will almost always make your answer more memorable.

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