Interview Questions for

Interview Questions for Position

Make sure that all questions asked during a job interview are work related, since legally you must be able to demonstrate a job-related necessity for asking the question: The information must be necessary to assess the applicant's ability, qualifications or job skills. If a discrimination case were filed, the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) would want to know the interviewer's intent in asking the question as well as how the information was used.

This list is by no means complete, but can serve as a template or starting point for your own customized list. Pick and choose the questions that best fit the position, and adjust them as necessary.

Basic/General

Could you please give us a short description of yourself in regard to your professional life?
What are your skills and abilities?
Given the job description and your background, do you have the ability to perform these tasks?
Are you fluent in more than one language? Speaking and/or writing?
Have you been a member of any professional or trade associations (either now or in the past) that are relevant to your professional experience or ability to perform the job?

Education

Why did you choose to attend the school from which you graduated (or that you are attending)?
What aspect of your education applies to this position?
How does any extracurricular training you’ve received qualify you for this job?
What activities outside of formal schooling have you done in order to improve your expertise?
What training opportunities have you taken advantage of and why?
How do you actively improve your job skills?

Experience

What are the areas of your experience that apply specifically to this position?
Can you please describe a typical day in your current position?
How do your current or previous positions qualify you for this one?
How does your experience outside of work qualify you for this job?
In your current position, what you have done well? Not done well?
What have been the most difficult assignments for you in your current position? At others?
What are the steps you’ve taken in the past 10 years that prepare you for this position?
In the past two years, what have you done to improve your qualifications?
How have you made significant contributions to your work group?
In what areas does your experience fall short for this job?
What are the steps you will take (or are taking) to make up for a shortfall in your expertise?

Confidence/Creativity

How confident are you that you can successfully perform the duties of this position and why?
How have you demonstrated the confidence you have in yourself?
How has your manager demonstrated his/her confidence in you?
How have your colleagues shown their confidence in you?
In the position you held before your current one, what were your greatest accomplishments?
Could you please describe any instances in your career where you’ve tried and failed?
What did you learn from failure or would do differently in order to succeed?
How do you go forward (or pick yourself up) when you’ve tried and failed?
What actions in your current position have made you the most proud? Least proud?
How creative are you? Can you give us an example of your creativity?
In a restrictive environment, how do you come up with a creative solution to a problem?

Pressure/Risk

What is the extent of your experience in high-pressure situations?
How have you demonstrated your ability to work under pressure?
How have you asserted yourself in an emergency or high-pressure situation?
What are the methods you have for dealing with stress?
How do you deal with risk on the job? To you? To your employees?
What is the greatest risk you have ever taken?
What is your greatest risk which resulted in failure?

Analytical Skills

What are your analytical skills or abilities?
Can you please elaborate on your analytical skills?
Can you describe the steps you take for analyzing and dealing with a difficult problem?
On a scale of one to ten (ten being the highest), how would you rate your analytical ability? Why?
What would your manager have to say about your analytical ability?
If you perform an incorrect analysis, how do you go about determining what you would do differently next time?

Handling conflict

How have you dealt with challenging work issues?
Could you please elaborate on your interpersonal skills?
How do you deal with conflict?
What can push your buttons?
What steps do you take to work effectively with people at various levels within your organization?
To what extent have your assignments required working with other departments?
How do you deal with an irate customer, so as to work effectively with him/her?
In what kinds of situations do you find it most difficult to deal with people?
To what extent have worked with executive or top management?
What experience have you had working with external agents or other companies?

Strengths

What are some of things at which you excel?
How do you define what is a strength?
What are your strengths and how have they helped you to succeed?
What part of your current position are you the most comfortable with?

Weaknesses

What are some of the things you find difficult to do?
How do you rank your weaknesses (in order of severity) and why?
What part of your current job are you the least comfortable with?
What are your weak points and how have you overcome them?
What about your expertise and ability to do the job would you want to improve?
What additional training or development will you need to perform in this position?

Short & Long Term Goals

What are your short and long term goals?
Where do you want to be 5 years from now in your career?
Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
Five years ago, where did you see yourself today?

Career Path

What in the job announcement/description interested you the most?
What interests you about a career in this field?
Why did you choose this profession and this specific position?
Why are you interested in the position and how does it fit you?
Why are you making a career change?
What goal(s) do you have for your career?
How will this position fit into your career plans?
What parts of this position do you look forward to the most? The least?
What challenges will you come across in moving from your current position to this one?

Company Knowledge

What can you tell me about our company?
In your opinion, why is our company more widely recognized than your current company?
What part of our organization appeals to you the most?
Knowing our organization, where would you make the greatest contribution?

Responsibility

How able are you to handle responsibility?
How has your current position prepared you for handling greater responsibilities?
What has the most significant responsibility in your career taught you?
What do you think your responsibilities will be if you’re hired?
Which of your qualities will be of most benefit in meeting the responsibilities for this position?
What are the outside responsibilities that would prohibit you from fulfilling job requirements?
What are the outside responsibilities that would keep you from working overtime?

Motivation

What motivates or gets you most excited about your work?
How do you motivate your colleagues? Your employees?
How do you rate yourself (on a scale one to ten, ten being the best) in regard to your work ethic?
What opportunities do you take to work independently?
When and how often do you work independently?
If you started your own company, what would that company do?
Why do you want to leave your current position? After such a short/long time period?
What do you intend to accomplish by being a (“title”) within our company?
What should a supervisor do to help an employee develop in his/her job?
What are some of the ways that a supervisor can motivate and de-motivate staff?
What are the situations where you motivated your staff to achieve amazing results?

Hiring Applicant

Why should we hire you for this position?
What specifically would convince us to hire you?
Why are you ready to be promoted?
What can you contribute to our company?
Why should we give you a chance to perform in this job?
Why should we hire you instead of one of the other candidates?

Further Information

What other topics would you like to address?
Could you please elaborate on anything that has not been discussed which you feel is important?
What questions do you have for me?
What would you like to say in closing?

This document is an integral part of a Will-it-Fly?® DKTS module.