Behavioral Interview Questions

Behavioral Interview Questions

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

Question #1 - How do you accomplish tasks when under a tight deadline? Give me an example. Sample Answer: Situation: Well, typically, I try to never commit to a deadline I don’t think I can make. But sometimes, unexpected things happen and you’re forced to think on your feet. For example, at my last job, my coworker 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

had to take some time off work because of an emergency, and his project was left without a manager. Task: My supervisor then instructed me to take over his project and complete what work was left. Suddenly, I had a new project on my hands, and I wasn’t really sure how to handle it, as the deadline was in 1 week.

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

Action: First, I requested a reduction on my own daily sales goals - which I was granted. This way, I could pay more attention to the project, and only a few hours per day to my original tasks. Once I had a consistent schedule and hours set for each of my tasks, it was mostly easy from there. Results: Thanks to my teammates and my good time 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

management skills, I managed to finish up 2 days early before the deadline. And once my coworker came back to work, I was able to review the whole thing with him before submitting it. For what it’s worth, he was thoroughly impressed. And a few months later, I even got promoted based on my performance.

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

Question #2 - Describe a long-term project you managed. How did you make sure everything was running smoothly? Sample Answer: Situation: When I was at Company X, I was managing the web development team in charge of setting up a new website for one of our biggest clients at the time. With 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

most projects, we had a process set up and we would get most sites done in up to 2 months. This project, however, was a bit different, as the website was supposed to be more detailed, with a lot of unique pages. So, we had to be a lot more careful with our time-management. Task: We had a strict deadline of 15 weeks, and I had to 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

make sure that we used up our time as efficiently as possible. Action: Before getting to actual work, I decided that we should plan everything out by the week. After some research and consulting with our team of developers, we decided to split the workload between different stages. We would devote around 1 week to the discovery phase, 5 weeks to design, 3 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

weeks to initial development and the rest to any modifications and updates. Results: In the end, we actually finished the website with all the promised functionalities in just under 3 months. The client was very satisfied with the result and eventually ended up recommending partners to our firm.

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

Question #3 - Sometimes, it’s almost impossible to get everything done on your to-do list. What do you do when your list of responsibilities becomes overwhelming? Situation: As a senior at University X, there were times when I just couldn’t physically get everything done on time. For example, towards the end of my final semester, I was 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

the Student Council President and I was also writing my University thesis. I had to submit my thesis the next day, and I was also working with my fellow student council members to organize the end-of-the-year ceremony for the University. Task: If I had tried to multitask both, I would just have done a poor job. Now, for me, the 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

University thesis was clearly higher up in my list of priorities. After all, this was what my studies were building up to for so long. But I couldn’t just abandon my council members either. With 24 hours until my thesis deadline, I had to think fast. Action: I decided that the best approach was to send all of my notes and outlines for the 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

event to the Student Council VP, who was also a close friend of mine. Luckily, he understood my situation and took over my event-management responsibilities. Then, I had just enough time to edit and finalize my paper. Results: Thanks to the VP, I was able to fix and finalize my Thesis. And fortunately, the event went without a hitch too. 

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Behavioral job interview questions about time management

In the end, I learned a valuable lesson on time-management, and the importance of having the right team around you who you can rely on.

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

Question #1 - How do you handle a disagreement with your colleagues? Give me an example of when you successfully persuaded someone to see things your way at work. Situation: When I was working as a recruiter at Company X, I noticed that one of the candidates who had sent in their application was perfect 

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

for the role. Though he didn’t have a university diploma and his resume wasn’t too polished, reading his cover letter, it was obvious he knew the industry and had delivered clear results. Task: I thought it was worth giving him a shot, but my supervisor didn’t see it that way. She skimmed through the resume and told me not to waste time, and just discard

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

the candidate. Action: I was, however, still pretty confident in the candidate, so I talked to the supervisor over lunch. I took a bit of an indirect approach, though. Instead of trying to directly pitch the candidate, I asked her to clarify the job description a bit more. We went a bit in-depth on what, exactly, we were looking for in the candidate, and once we 

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

were done discussing it, I told her that we happened to have a candidate that possessed all the relevant experience, but his resume was a bit weak. Results: Convinced, the supervisor decided to give the candidate’s application a more in-depth look and realized that they were, in fact, very qualified. She thanked me for bringing it up and agreed with me that the candidate was worth calling in for an interview.

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

Question #2 - What would you do if you misunderstood an important task on the job? Give me an example. Situation: At my previous internship at Company X, I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to finish a presentation for a team meeting. The deadline my boss gave me was around a week, which was completely fair 

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

and I didn’t think it would be a problem. However, apparently, we had some miscommunication with what he’d meant with the deadline. I thought it was the date where we would go through the presentation, edit it together, and submit it like that. Apparently what he’d meant, though, was to have the presentation 100% ready on that date.

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

Task: So, I had to submit a draft presentation first, edit it based on my manager’s comments, and then present the report, all within 2 days. Action: I booked a meeting with the manager for the following day, and spent 4 extra hours at the office to make sure that the first draft of the presentation was spotless. We held the meeting the next day, and 

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

went through the presentation together to make sure it’s spotless. Results: The manager loved the work, and it only took us around 30 minutes to finalize the whole thing.

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

Question #3 - Have you ever had to work under someone who wasn’t very good at communicating? What happened? Situation: Yes, at my last job as a tech recruiter the hiring manager I was working directly with was somewhat more difficult to communicate with. He had very strict and precise requirements on the type of 

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

candidates he wanted to invite for interviews. He wasn’t open to much communication on the matter or trying new things even when the company desperately needed new hires. This one time, I got a candidate that was a pretty good fit for the job, but was lacking in some aspects.hole thing. Task: I wanted to make sure that we got the person in for 

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Behavioral job interview questions about communication skills

an interview, but I was 100% sure that my hiring manager would shut me down. Action: So, before running the candidate through him, I called them and collected his biggest strengths to present to the hiring manager. Results: The hiring manager did, indeed, end up liking the candidate and calling them in for an interview.

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

Question #1 - Tell me about a time when you had to work with someone completely different from you. How did you adapt to collaborate better? Situation: Sure, I always enjoy working with new and different people. Usually, because they bring something new to the table. At Company X, there was a particularly young developer

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

who was assigned to work with me on a new software development project, and I was to run him through what our typical coding process was like. Task: It was also my job to get to know him, and find common ground so that we could effectively work together. The fact that he was younger wasn’t an issue for me, but because he was completely self-taught, 

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

he didn’t know a lot about the industry methodologies we used.   Action: Teaching him everything from scratch would take too much time. So, instead, I briefly explained the development process (waterfall model) we were using for that specific project, and taught him how to write tests for our code-base. Writing tests is the 

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

number 1 way to learn what code does. After all, that’s how I got started with development. Results: I also sat down and helped him go through the material at times, but in the end, he surprised me by how much of a fast-learner he was. He just needed a bit of encouragement and guidance. Through this approach, he learned our whole routine in 

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

less than a week, while most of our new hires needed at least up to 2 weeks. In return, I learned a lot about multitasking and time-management from him. The whole thing was a win-win situation, and it was all smooth sailing the next time we worked together (which was quite often).

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

Question #2 - What do you do when your team member refuses to, or just can’t complete their part of the work? Give me an example. Situation: There was one co-worker at Company X who was notorious for being bad at deadlines. But she would always end up delivering exceptional work, just a few hours (or worse - days) late.

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

For some reason, the company was ok with this as her work was just too good. So, this one time, the management put us together to work on a time-sensitive project. Task: Our task was to turn in a sales presentation together and have our manager go over it before sending the client the final version. Because of how important the project was, I 

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

didn’t want to risk going over the deadline - as this would also directly impact other people. Either way, for everyone’s sake, I had to somehow get her to hurry up with the project. So, I decided to try and push her a little and see what would happen. Action: I started regularly checking in on her to see where she was with work. I would 

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

bring it up at times over lunch, send a quick Slack message, and so on. She wasn’t taking this quite well, but it DID get her to work faster and more efficiently. Results: At the end, the constant check-ins and pushing did have a positive effect, even though the co-worker didn’t particularly like me too much once we were finished with 

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Behavioral job interview questions about teamwork

the work. We even managed to submit the final version of the presentation 2 days before the deadline.

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