Interview Questions

Questions Pertaining to Candidate's General and Biographic Background

• Tell us about yourself.

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• What are your interest and hobbies and what do you do to pursue them? How much time
you spend on them?
• What kind of books you read? Which books impressed you most any why? Which is the
latest book did you read and what are your comments on it?
• Are you aware of what others think about you, about their opinions of you?
• What is your worst weakness and how do you tackle it?
• Tell us about any one situation when you were under pressure and felt stressful. How did
you manage the situation?
• Do you ever get angry; what makes you angry? And at that time, how do you manage
your anger?
• Which period of your life so far was the most enjoyable part of your life and why?
• What motivates you?
• Do you have any role models and why do they inspire you?
• What are the major achievements in personal and professional life till date?
• What have been the greatest disappointments in your life?
• What are your life time objectives?
• What are your career goals?
• Where do you see yourself in next five/ten years?
• What is your management/working style? Give some examples.
• Can you tell about any situation in your life when you had to take some tough decisions?
• How do you describe yourself as a team worker or are you a loner? Give some examples.
• How do you take the criticism from others?
• What do you think about working longer hours? Do you like working on your weekends?
• Do you take work home with you?
• Describe any problematic situation you came across and how did you solve it?
• If you get an opportunity to re-live your life, what would you do differently?

Questions Related to Previous Job(s)

• Why have you been out of work so long? (for a fresher or for a person who has a break
in his employment)
• Why did you choose this career? (normally asked to a fresher)
• Give us a brief idea about your previous work assignments.
• Which of these jobs you enjoyed the most and why?
• Which organization would you rate the best for you so far and why?
• What parts of your current job you like the most and what do you detest the most?
• Describe your typical work day/work week.
• What are your responsibilities and accountability areas in your current position?
 • What are the challenges in your current assignment and how to you tackle them?
• Can you describe your major achievements in your current and previous jobs?
• Can you describe your major failures in your current and previous jobs?
• Tell us something about your current team including your boss.
• Give us some idea about your rate of progression and advancement till date like patents,
promotions, salary raise, bonuses, rewards, recognition etc
• What is your current salary as compared to your starting salary on the current job?
• How could you have improved your career progression? (for a person whose
career/salary advancement has been sluggish)
• Why have you been changing jobs so frequently? (for a person who has changed the jobs
very frequently)
• We see that as of now you are unemployed. What have you been doing since you left
your college/last job? Were you fired? Why did you leave? (for a person who is either
fresh from college or is out of job currently, though has previous experience)
• Why are your earning lower than the current market norms? (for a person getting less
emoluments)
• Why do you want to leave your current job? Why are you looking out for a new job?
• Is it OK with you if we contact your previous employers for a reference?

Questions Related to the Job and Company for Which Being Interviewed

• Why are you interested in this job?

• What do you know about our company?
• Have you heard anything negative about our organization?
• Why are you interested in our company?
• Why do you think that you are best suited for this job?
• Why should we hire you? How are you better than other interview candidates?
• What challenges are you looking for in the job you have applied for?
• Are you aware of the major challenges that our industry sector/our organization is facing
at the moment?
• What will be your contribution to our company knowing the job description?
• Don't you think you are overqualified for this position? (In case the person has lot more
qualifications and experience)
• We see that you don’t have the required qualifications and experience. What do you have
to say about it? (In case the person is marginally short of qualifications and experience)
• Job entails lots of traveling. are you OK with it?
• Will you have any difficulty in relocating yourself quickly if selected? How soon can you
join us?
• What, as per you, should be the work environment for your assignment with us?
• How would you find the prospect of working under a person much younger than you?
• Are you looking out for alternatives in case you don't bag this job?
• What will be your career goals here onwards, in case your selection by us?
• What are your expectations regarding emoluments?

Questions to Evaluate Candidates on Soft Competencies/Skills

• Tell us about an important assignment you handled. How did you manage it and what
were the results?
• How do you set up the priorities for your day-to-day work?
• If any of your projects derails, goes behind schedule, how do you pull it up to bring it
back on track?
• What is more important to you; processes or results? What ever is your answer, why do
you think it that way?
• Can you give an example of any process improvements you achieved recently and what
was its impact on various factors?
• Why do you think reengineering of processes fail many times? Do you think one should
not reengineer but go gradual on improvements?
• How do you rate yourself as a result focused person and why?
• Are you a deadline and timeline conscious person and how do you make sure that they
are met?
• Do you like to take the challenges involved in fire fighting or would you rather be more
cautious and eliminate such emergencies?
• Have you worked on any cross-functional project? What were your experiences on it as
compared to a purely internal or departmental project?
• Do you believe in internal customer care concept? Would you still help the next-in-line
department if because of your cooperation it is going to steal the show? Do you any such
example from your past experience?
• Do you have at the back of your mind somewhere the requirements of you ultimate
external customers? Does your approach to work get guided by it? Can you illustrate the
point in light of your experience so far?
• How do you rate yourself as a decision maker? Can you describe any decision making
situation where you were at cross roads; a dilemma situation, and you came out as a
winner?
• Tell us about a situation where you goofed in decision making? How did you handle it
then?
• Can you construct your decision making process and share with us? Take your time to
think and then tell us.
• Are you the type of person who wishes to have a 100% correct decision and in the
process may miss out on timelines or budget limits etc or will you take a chance to meet
the other factors? In either case, tell us why?
• Suppose you take a considered decision in a situation where others are shying away from
any commitment but it is important to take decision and it backfires. Do you display
courage, own it and face the consequences or do you manipulate an apology or play a
blame game or play politics and get scotfree? What is right in an hierarchical formal
organizational situation where every one's authority areas are earmarked, yet decisions
are not forthcoming?
• Can you confidently communicate with your superiors your professional ideas? Do the
persons high up in the organization hierarchy intimidate you?
• If you are confident and at ease in dealing with superiors, what have you done to build up
this kind of confidence?
• How do you update your knowledge and skills? Do you have any specific approach to it?
Can you elaborate it?
• Describe your problem solving process.
• Which do you prefer, attend to the problem and give an immediate short term solution so
that things move on or would you wait on solving the problem until you have eliminated
it from the grass root level?
• Do you encourage participation of your team members or do you push your decisions
through them? Provide some examples to illustrate your style.
• In building consensus on a solution to a complex problem, have you faced any
difficulties? What were they? How do you manage?
• Do you see the conflicts in your day-to-day work among the people and of people with
you? What is your conflict management style?
• Can you describe your conflict handing process? Give an example.
• Do you lose your cool or get angry or frustrated when you get into a conflict with some
one? How do you act?
• Did you ever have significant difference of opinion with your boss? What was it? How
did you deal with it?
• Has it ever happened with you when your basic values were put to test in an
organizational situation. What did you do?
• In your previous jobs, did you work with great teams? Give an example and why do you
consider that to be a great team? What was your role and contribution in making it so?
• What are your proposals for development of people working for you? Have you tried
some of them?
• What are your leadership qualities? Do people work for you with enthusiasm by taking
initiatives? Then, you must also be delegating lots?
• Sometimes it happens that if you work for perfection or 100% quality, you may lose an
opportunity, time is of essence. Would you rather push an imperfect product or solution
so as to make the most of the opportunity? What's you take on it?
• Are you a good implementer, an action person? Are you also a good thinker and planner?
What is more important for you? Why?
• Can you narrate the problems you faced in implementing any solution that you recently
introduced? How did you tackle them?
• Tell us something where you applied your creativity and met with a breakthrough.
• What kind of creativity systems or techniques do you use with your team?
• Do you encourage borrowed or copied creativity or you only appreciate something
originally done? Why?
• Can you sell your concept, ideas and solutions to others who matter? Share your
experience with us on this.
• How do you rate yourself as a presenter? Are your presentations appreciated by your
audience? Can you tell us the kind of feedback you get from them on your presentation?
• Do you have any experience of conducting or coordinating the meetings, either in a room
or using teleconferencing facilities? Give one such example and how did the meeting go
on various counts?
• You have been assigned a project but you have not been given a clear picture of it; its
pretty hazy. Can you still proceed and complete it? Did you do something like this in
your earlier jobs?
 • In the event when some information is just not available, does the lack of information
bother you? Can you work in ambiguous situations? Do you have such an experience to
share with us?
• Are you open enough to share your part of information in a team situation or in a cross
functional project? Perhaps keeping that information up your sleeve till emergencies arise
can be a way to gain importance. Your comments?
• Are you a person who first sees the big picture of things and then go into details or do
you do it the other way round? Can you give an example from your work situation.

Questions (Related to Studies) for Persons Just Graduated and Are Facing Interviews for
First Job

• What was your specialization?

• Why did you choose this specialization?
• What courses you took up in your college?
• Which were your most favorite courses and why?
• Did you undertake any project work?
• Please explain your project work in detail.
• Was the project done by you alone or you were one of the team?
• What was you role in this project and what did you contribute?
• Was the project implemented? What was your role in implementation? What is the
outcome of implementation?
• (In case the project was not implemented) Why did not you implement the project?
What's the big fun of undertaking a theoretical project that you cannot implement?
• What do you think is more important; writing and presenting the project report or its
implementation?
• How sound are you technically? Give some examples to prove that you are technically
superior.
• Which department will you like to work for in our organization? Why that particular
department?
• Do you give importance to work and learning or the salary?
• How much do you know about our company?
• Do you know about our competitors?
• Why would you like to work in our organization?
• How are you better than the other candidates?