Interview Questions -HELP!-

[deznice]

hey guys,
Quick serious question here, any managers on the boards that use behavioral interview questions? Or anyone really good at them? I have an interview coming up, I know it's going to be behavioural based ?'s and I need help. I suck at this type of interview.....

see my example below.

Behavioral-Based Questions
In addition to asking questions about your work experiences and skills listed on your resume, you will be asked several behavioral-based questions. Examples of such questions are as follows:

Describe a situation when you saw room for improvement in a task you were required to complete. What did you do? Did you present your idea?

In your current or last position, give me an example of the steps you took to respond to a specific customer complaint. How did the customer react? Was the customer satisfied?


Any books I should read or websites to check out?

HELP!

[be leaves]

here's plenty of them
http://www.quintcareers.com/sample_behavioral.html


I just had an interview of this sort 2 weeks ago (i found out yesterday i got the job).

remember for every question they want to hear 3 parts:
1. a real situation
2. your actual actions
3. why everything was okay in the end and what you learned (if you learned nothing, pretend you weren't sure of something and say you learned/confirmed that)



remember, be calm and positive.. even if you're telling a story about your balls getting kicked in and your hair getting ripped out.. make it an uplifting it-wasn't-all-THAT-bad kind of story.



good luck!

[spooky]

youre being interviewed, not doing the interview, correct?

first off, id have to ask the guy if hes going to be paying you to think and have opinions. im one of those assholes that is super effecient at work, i even spend time focusing on how to economize my own physical movement. and i do it for other people too. and when my boss is about to fuck up, im usually right there pointing it out.

for instance, and im using this because it was an extreme example, we got a new store manager at my old night job, a papa johns, where i delivered pizza. he wanted to improve customer service and decrease the amount of time it takes to get a pizza to the door, his solution was to add more drivers and decrease the number of deliveries each driver can take on a single outing from four to two.

at this point in the story, i should say that everywhere ive ever delivered pizza, ive always been hands down the fastest and most effecient driver that had ever worked there. i kept track of my deliveries per hour, for the night, i tracked how many runs per hour even on a weekly, monthly and annual bassis. i tracked the other drivers as well. i also tracked the out the door times, the volume, the sales for the night. all sorts of numbers to essentially be aware of how i was doing compared to the store and the other drivers. for those that have delivered pizza before, when i worked a volume shift, i took one delivery every ten minutes while i was clocked in, and for an annual runs per hour, working all shifts, i was right at 4 runs per hour, actually, about 3.9. most other drivers were in the 2.3-2.8 range. i was effecient on the road, i would hop fences, park on one block and cut through someones yard to the next block if it would save me time, i ran when i was on foot, i never once took an elevator. working in store, i was the only person that could work the cut table, and out pace both ovens solo. in short, i didnt fuck around, i knew my shit. most deliveries on a single shift, 56 baby!

anyway, i pretty much laughed in his face when he put it on the schedule, nearly twice the number of drivers we normally had on a friday night, told him exactly what was going to happen if he did it, and on the busy friday night when he started it for the first time, as he limited the deliveries i was allowed to take early on in the night, i assured him, when it all fell apart, i was going to keep on limiting myself for the whole night, so an accurate evaluation of his experiment could be done.

sure enough, about two hours into our rush, the deliveries had stacked up, and were sitting in the store for over an hour before they even left to be delivered. he asked me to catch him up, to take five or six deliveries on a single run, and i refused, as i promised to do earlier that night. we gave away alot of free pizza that night.

when it was over, i told him where he had messed up, why his method didnt work, and exactly what he had to do to fix it. he pretty much told me to my face how experienced he was, and how i was just a driver, and i didnt know any better. eventually, i bet him a very large sum of money that, if i was allowed to run the store, i could lower out out the door time below the target improvement number he was attempting to get, and increase our all our good numbers with a greatly reduced staff than what we usually had.

so i picked my people, ran it the way i wanted the next friday night, with less than half the number of employees he had the previous friday, and not a single pizza left the store older than 18 minutes old, there were no late pizzas, no free pizzas, all the drivers made lots of money. labor that day was way under 20%, it was actually just under 14%, which was one of the best numbers we had that year, and everyone was happy.

except the manager. he never paid for the bet he lost, and tried to fuck with me and my hours at every oppertunity he could after that.

anyway, my point is, after it was all said and done, he didnt feel that employees were paid to think there, they should only do what they were told. im an asshole who he couldnt fire, and he tried, but his boss wouldnt let him, so maybe im a bad example, but often, managers are bothered by 'underlings' having opinions, and youre best to just watch the shit hit the fan and clock out when your shift is over.

so if asked these sorts of questions, id have to get some very specific answers about who i was working for, and how fragile their ego was. in a job where i needed the money, and could be fired if i stepped on toes, i probably wouldnt try to fix anything, i would just do what im told without question.

on the customer service end, from experience, when a customer is upset with something, take the blame personally. say it was your fault, even if it wasnt, it takes the wind out of the complainers sails, and usually they end up being happy from having their ego stroked, feeling like they fixed something, feeling like they had a spine for once, and usually end up being quite happy when its all said and done.

you just have to know how to mind fuck people into doing what you want. personally, when someone im interviewing gives me a shallow what i want to hear answer, i mark them off as unemployable. but i only hire thinking people, it really just depends on the boss, what he is looking for in an employee.

[Woodchuck]

Spooky hit it dead on... think of a simple situation that has all the right components (customer service, team building, management etc)

The simplest situation can be explained as an organizational behavior masterpiece.

So, my advice at the 10,000' level is keep the situation as simple as possible and you will rock!

[be leaves]

do keep it simple... usually these types of interviews involve a series of these questions and you don't want to go into too much detail with one situation if they're just waiting for a quick answer so they can go on to the next of ten questions... plus you don't want to wear yourself out..

spooky did make a good point, have questions ready to ask them.

asking if they are looking for a pro-active thinker is a good one, that is, if you're a go-getter like spooky. if you're a lazy bum you might wanna ask if their looking for someone who follows orders closely and takes their time "to be thorough."
ask the questions that will help you make sure that this job is a good fit for you. remember it's also about you shopping for positions, not just about them interviewing you. also, a good question that usually throws them for a loop is "what would you like to say i've accomplished a year from now?"

oh, and wear shoes.

[the big lebowski]

also, since you may have answers mapped out in your head, don't answer right away when they ask. give yourself a few seconds to "think" of an appropriate answer. obviously don't sit there for 30 minutes, but don't start answering the second the last word comes out of their mouth. give it 5-10 seconds of eyebrow crunching. they'll view you as someone who takes what's given to them and considers it. and not someone who just spouts out premade answers ahead of themselves.

[jwdd27]

I've interviewed plenty of people and have had to ask Deznice's example questions. As well as testing competence and initiative in their previous job, they are also a way of testing a candidate's confidence and communication skills at the interview by getting them to tell a story. As an interviewer I tend to go very quiet at this stage, letting the candidate talk it up for as long as they can and not filling in any pauses.

If they can come up with something relevant and express what happened clearly, it is impressive. Much depends on the age and experience of the candidate - I wouldn't expect a 19-year-old to have too much of a mind-blowing anecdote, but if they can come up with something along the lines of Spooky's story, maybe on a smaller scale, then that's all that's expected.
If you really can't come up with anything, make up something minor which you COULD have done, or thought about doing in your last job - as long as it's not a huge lie, like "I doubled turnover", we're not going to check up if that shit really happened. (Well I wouldn't anyway...)

But don't worry if you blow this part of the interview - relevant job experience and answers to the more job-specific questions carry the most weight, and it's understandable if you're a little nervous.

General and obvious advice:
Turn up on time - scout the place out the day before, turn up for an interview saying "sorry I'm late..." and you're fucked.

Ask the interviewer plenty of questions throughout the interview - shows your interest in getting the job and also helps provide a more relaxed atmosphere, rather than the interviewer just ploughing through the list of questions.

And from a personal point of view, you make ONE spelling or grammatical error in your application, and it's in the bin and you don't even get a rejection letter. If getting things right is not important to you, then fuck you.
Spooky, I enjoyed your pizza story, but "oppertunity"? Oh wait, you're a designer aren't you? - OK, I understand, you got the job...

[spooky]

Originally Posted by jwdd27

Spooky, I enjoyed your pizza story, but "oppertunity"? Oh wait, you're a designer aren't you? - OK, I understand, you got the job...

like that was the only typo in that mess, not to mention that i dont capitalize or use appropriate punctuation. im more about coveying the idea than polishing a sentence. polishing sentences is how my personal assistant would justify a paycheck. i wouldnt apply for the job of personal assistant, but theres a place for everyone, i suppose.

[DanClass]

Originally Posted by spooky

like that was the only typo in that mess, not to mention that i dont capitalize or use appropriate punctuation. im more about coveying the idea than polishing a sentence. polishing sentences is how my personal assistant would justify a paycheck. i wouldnt apply for the job of personal assistant, but theres a place for everyone, i suppose.

unless it's my sentences in the MFin chat

asshole

[be leaves]

Originally Posted by DanClass

unless it's my sentences in the MFin chat

asshole

girls.. girls... you're both pretty.