October 2006 ISSUE

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CAREERS

Behavioural Questions Reach Into Your Character

Editor’s Note: The following article is tailored from notes from Ginny Nicholson, CMA, APEGGA’s former Manager, Administration and Human Resources. Although Ginny has moved on to another position, we’ll continue offering her insight on job hunting as space in our Careers section permits.

Many of the questions you face in a job interview are designed to find out about your behaviours. You may have every skill the job requires and all the natural talent in the universe, but if employers perceive that you’re going to be a difficult, disruptive force in the workplace, they will not hire you.
Here are some commonly asked employer behavioural questions you should prepare for.

• What can you tell me about our company and its goals?

• What attracts you about our company the most?

• Which of your skills is the closest fit with the position? Why?

• Describe a typical day in your present or most recent job?

• What specific strengths did you bring to your last position that made you effective?

• What two or three soft skills do you see yourself needing to improve?

• What is your plan for improving them?

• Where do you see yourself five years from now?

• What were three things you liked best about your last position, and why?

• What two or three things would you change about your last position and why?

• Give me an example of a very difficult decision you had to make in a work situation, and what was the outcome?

• If you had to make that decision again, would it be the same?

• What is a successful project that you managed and what do you think made it so successful?

• Give me an example of a situation you were in in which you had to deal with conflict with a boss. How did you handle it? What was the outcome?

• Same question, but with a co-worker?

• What are your personal ethics for the workplace?

• What are key principles of customer service and give me a recent example of how you applied them?

• What is your approach to accomplishing a task that a team has been assigned? Give me an example of a successful team project of more than a month’s duration in which you were involved. Why do you think it was so successful?

• Tell me about a project you managed that was not so successful. In hindsight, what might you do differently for a better outcome and why?

• Tell me about a lesson you learned from someone else’s mistake.

• How do you go about solving a particularly difficult problem?

• What three key characteristics define your interpersonal style?

• What is your approach to multi-tasking when you have several priorities?

• Give a recent example of how you handled overload in a work situation?

• Are there activities that you undertake outside of work that contribute to the skills that you need for work? Explain.

• What have been some of the strengths and areas for improvement pointed out in performance reviews you have had?

• If I call your references, what patterns will I hear about?

• How would you describe your style under pressure? Give an example from your experience of a positive effect of pressure. And a negative one?

• Describe the most significant report or presentation you had to prepare.

• How do you like to be managed?

• Your supervisor tells you something that you are convinced is dead wrong. What would you do?

• How do you feel about co-workers who are not respectful to you?
  Here are some less commonly asked behavioural questions.

• If you had only one word to describe yourself, what would that be?

• What types of books do you like to read?

• What’s the last book you have read and what is your opinion of it?

• What were your best and worst subjects?

• What’s one thing that should never be communicated in an e-mail or memo?

• Do you have a favourite interview question?

• What very important decisions did you make in the last six months?

• What are your goals, personal and professional?

• What clues have you come to recognize that indicate to yourself that you’re under too much stress?

• Describe your personality.

• What are things that bother you most about people?

• When have you failed? Describe the circumstances and how did you learn from this?

• Would you rather formulate a plan or carry it out?

• What kinds of things do you worry about?

• What’s your favourite trendy business euphemism?

• What are some of your pet peeves?

• Are you generally lucky or unlucky?

• Do you see yourself as a risk-taker or more conservative?

• What would you like to do better? How are you managing your self-improvement program?