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

1. In your job at …………, how did you ensure that your internal/external
customer’s needs were met? Give me an example of one customer.
2. Sooner or later, we all have to deal with an internal/external customer who makes
unreasonable demands. Think of a time when you had to handle an unreasonable
request. What did you do?
3. Describe a time when you had to ask numerous questions and listen carefully to
clarify the exact nature of an internal/external customer’s problem or needs.

Safety Awareness

1. Tell me about a hazardous material or piece of equipment you have worked with?
What special procedures did you follow?
2. Sometimes people have to bend safety or security rules to get a job done. Give
me an example of when you had to do this.
3. Have you trained others to use safety equipment or procedures? Give me a
specific example.

Energy

1. How many hours of overtime have you worked in the past two months (or other
recent period)? Tell me about the situation that led to the overtime.
2. Describe a time when you’ve been particularly busy at work/school. What kind
of hours did you work?
3. Tell me about a time when you had to put things together in sequence at a steady
tempo. What did you do to maintain the tempo?

Building Relationships
 1. How would you define a conducive work environment?
2. Have you worked with many people in your previous jobs/at school? How many?
What was it like? What were the people like?
3. Have you worked with a group like this before? What was it like. How did you
handle it?
4. What type of person do you get along with best? Why?
5. What difficulties do you have in tolerating people with different backgrounds and
interests from yours?

Developmental Ambition

1. Tell me about a time in your job when you had opportunities for promotion or
advancement. How satisfied/dissatisfied were you with that?
2. What training and development activities do you think you may require for this
job?
3. What interests you most about this position? Why?
4. What would you say are the main qualities this job demands?
5. What achievements are you most proud of to date?