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Job Interview Questions

11/07/2007 11:27 PM

Hi,

What types of interview questions have you had to deal with at interviews?

If possible could you please list these questions. e.g: On your last project assignment, what problems did you identify that had been previously overlooked?

Please email me your questions, Thanks.

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#1

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/08/2007 10:54 AM

If you are going for a job in your chosen field you should be quite versed in the questions that may arise. A good rule of thumb is to use the S.T.A.R. technique in answering your questions.

S. situation (what was the problem? )

T. task (What was your role in this?)

A. Analysis (what and Why were the directions you chose to take in correcting the problem or implementing an idea?)

R. result (What was the outcome?)

Never bullshit with an answer if you are not sure. They already know the answer they are looking for. BUT, KNOW WHERE YOU CAN GO TO GET THE ANSWER!

Never tell your prospective boss that your old boss was an @$$hole. It's always better to be professional. Look and act the part!

If you can get information about the company you are trying to work for, use it to your advantage when they ask you "Why do you want to work for us?" they are usually impressed that you actually did some homework to learn about there company and that you chose to work for them.

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#6
In reply to #1

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/09/2007 10:27 AM

I remember interviewing a fellow who had a reputation in operating systems support, he did mention that he had a problem with a boss and as a result he had to tip the boss's desk over. Needless to say we didn't make him an offer.

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#2

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/08/2007 11:33 PM

What sort of employment interviews are you asking about?

Here's a recent discussion about an engineering question.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/13342/Balloon-On-The-Moon

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#3

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/09/2007 4:34 AM

If its your first interview , probably they will start with your education and related questions , if you change the job and look for new employer he will definatly ask about your old company functioning , success and failure from your part and how you tackled or how you improved , answers given with confidence work well , they don`t expect down to earth logical answers and comments from you initially , like others said you have to do home work of your company where you are interviewed

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#4

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/09/2007 6:55 AM

I am semi-retired (once retired but now working as a consultant) so I haven't really interviewed for a job in quite a while. However, when I was in the general workforce, the interviews I have either conducted or participated in consisted of two parts: the 1st part consisted of behavioral questions and the 2nd part was technical questions related specifically to the postion being filled.

Behavioral questions were fashioned something like this:

  1. Tell me about a situation you had where you were instructed by your supervisor to do something that you felt was not right. What did you do? What was the result?
  2. Tell me about an assignment you had that was very challanging. Were you successful? Tell me how you went about resolving the challanging issues?
  3. Tell me about a situation you had where you had to work with a difficult co-worker. What was difficult about working with that individual? What did you do to get along with that person? Do you feel you were successful in this assignment.

The technical questions were fashioned such that the individual had to have experience in that field to be able to answer them.

Hope this helps you.

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#5

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/09/2007 9:53 AM

No one here can answer you with what you need to know. Every interviewer has their own line of questions.

They will start with conversation to put you at ease.

They will asking about information on your resume, things that might be a little fuzzy or to give them some comfort that you didn't give them an over inflated resume.

They might ask you what you know about their company. They want to find out if you've taken the initiative to do some homework about the company.

They will ask you about how will you benefit the company if they should hire you. It pays to have an answer for this question in advance. Don't make it a canned answer but you want to imagine you've already been asked this question before and prepare for it.

They might ask you how you would go about completing a project from start to finish. What steps and preparation you would take. Or they might ask you what projects you have done from concept to completion.

They don't expect you to be able to answer every question but they do look for how well you are prepared. They want to see how well you handle the questions asked.

Do not volunteer anything. Only answer the questions that are asked. Being too open could cost you the job because you might give information that you wouldn't want them to know.

Do not knock any company that you might have had a bad experience with. They might ask you why you left that company. Saying that they aren't meeting your financial needs is acceptible.

Do not talk about money, unless they bring it up and be prepared with fair salary information if they do. Remember they may not offer you what you think you deserve. They will want to start you at a starting out level before increasing after you've proven yourself to them. Remember do not talk about salary unless they bring it up.

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#8
In reply to #5

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/12/2007 12:26 PM

"They will start with conversation to put you at your ease".

Like, for example: "You are much too young to be a manager in this environment" immediately you walk in the door*. Of course you put your date of birth on the application, but that's not the point. They are looking to see how you handle this sort of thing. Think in terms of "yes, there may be initial difficulties because I look so young, but I have found that it doesn't take long to gain peoples' respect". You'll probably get a "how"-type answer. Be prepared to field almost any question/statement. Then turn their offer down if you can afford to - the existing management are almost certainly stress-junkies

*Can be adapted for any function of any job and/or your appearance, but given that you're asking for advice, I suspect you've not experienced vast numbers of job interviews.

If there are only a few jobs that look attractive, apply for others where you can expect to be interviewed. You may be able to talk your way into a job that hasn't yet been advertised, and the interview experience should prove useful anyway

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#9
In reply to #8

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/12/2007 1:34 PM

I had an interview and the interview panel was a person from HR and the guy who would turn out to be my manager. He turned out to be a poor manager because he insisted on keeping his hands in the technical activities of the group. This turned out to be professional suicide for him. This was not an uncommon occurrence in IT back in the 70's. A good technical person would be rewarded by making him/her a manager because it was the only way they could give the person a raise. The net effect was generally the loss of a good techie and the gain of a poor/lousy manager.

In the interview he asked me how to do a specific, highly technical task. It was the sort of thing that most people would never do but he would because he was always looking for esoteric solutions to problems or perhaps he would find an esoteric solution and then look for a problem to apply it too.

I knew enough about the subject to know that if I ran into any kind of a problem I could end up bringing the entire system down and 1,000+ users of our online systems would be sitting on their hands for as long as it took to get the system back up again so the cost of a mistake could be calculated in very real dollars.

I did not know how to do the specific thing that he asked about but I did understand enough to know what the potential exposures were. My reply was something along the line that if it was felt that this was the required solution to a problem then the problem had not been sufficiently investigated and the search for a solution should continue until a safer option could be identified. He had a tendency to use exotic operating system facilities to perform functions that actually belonged in the application program. The actual question was something about writing a PCI I/O appendage under OS/360. My concern for system availability and stability was acceptable though and I got the job. Three months later he said that he had made a mistake when he hired me and he had me reclassified to a higher position which included a triple increment in my pay.
I could have said that I didn't know how to do it but I think that I was able to provide an answer that indicated I had some understanding of the various principles involved. Sometimes we need to be as creative in answering the questions as they are in asking them.

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#10
In reply to #9

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/12/2007 2:02 PM

Great points.

They want to make sure you're going to answer with something more experienced based rather then a text book answer.

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#7

Re: Job Interview Questions

11/10/2007 11:36 AM

I think you have gotten some good advice here. I would also be prepared to answer some questions that you did not anticipate or seems bizarre. One of the interviewer's goals is to see how well you handle stress and work through problems. A good example:

How many barbers do you think there are in your state (or city,country etc.)?

The wrong answer is "Um, I don't know. I would have to look that up."

The right answer is "Well, there are about X number of people in the state, and a barber can probably cut y number of heads a day, and most people get their hair cut at least once/month, so I would guess there are about about z number of barbers."

The number is not important, but showing you can follow a logical path is.

Good luck!

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#11

Re: Job Interview Questions

01/12/2012 8:54 AM

Hi

This topic help me a lot in developing my project. I will contribute more when I finished it.

If you want to get more materials that related to this topic, you can visit:

http://typicalinterviewquestions.info/network-security-analyst-interview-questions/

Best regards.

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