• Unstructured Interviews
• Semi-structured Interviews
• Situational Interviews
• Comprehensive Structured Interviews
• Behavioral Interviews

Unstructured Interviews | Top Of Page

Typically this is a spontaneous conversation where most of the questions have not been prepared in advance. In this type of interview, don't be modest since the interviewer may not think to ask you more relevant questions later in the interview. Without going off topic, use each question as an opportunity to extrapolate and provide examples of your relevant experience.

Most likely, they will include a combination of job related questions, previous experience questions and interpersonal skills assessment. Some common interview questions are:

• What is your proudest accomplishment?
• Tell me about yourself.
• Why did you leave your last job/why do you want to leave your current job?
• What are your major strengths?
• What are your major weaknesses?
• What are your career goals?
• How are you best managed?
• How do you go about building a team?
• What qualities have you liked or disliked in your bosses? Why?
• When and why have you fired people?
• Have you made any mistakes during your career? If so, what were they? How did you fix them?
• What is the most adverse situation with which you have had to deal in your personal or professional life? How did you deal with it? What was the outcome?

Semi-structured Interview | Top Of Page

In this situation, the Interviewer will ask all the candidates the same questions, with minor changes based on answers. This type of interview generally contains questions related specifically to the job and answers are scored or ranked. Sample questions for a Marketing Manger position might include:

• What is the current status of your marketing portfolio and what improvements have you made while managing it?
• Please describe an incidence where you brought real innovation to your portfolio.
• Please describe the largest marketing campaign, in budget and scope, you have personally managed.
• Have you ever launched a new product? If so, how many and describe your role and process as well as the outcome.
• Have you ever worked on a marketing initiative with a very limited budget that required real creativity and out of the box thinking? If so, describe the initiative and your role. What were the results?
• What is the most successful marketing campaign you have worked on? What made it a success?
• What was the most challenging marketing initiative that you have worked on? What was the outcome?
• Describe your level of interaction and relationship with the sales department at your current company.
• What experience have you had working with budgets?
• How many people have reported to you in the past? Describe your management style.

Situational Interview | Top Of Page

Situations are described to the candidate and they are asked to predict what they would do in a similar situation. Some examples of situational questions might include:

• You are an assistant manager put into a department to supervise staff who are experienced. One of the staff is extremely resentful (as he/she was turned down for the role) and is being unhelpful and obstructive. How would you handle the situation?
• A work colleague has told you in confidence that she suspects another colleague of stealing. What would your actions be?
• You are giving a presentation where one member of the audience is continually stopping you and diverting you from the presentation. What would you do?
• How do you respond to a peer who is preventing your team from completing its project? Assume you are a supervisor and one of your subordinate employees consistently arrives late to work. What action would you take?

Comprehensive Structured Interview | Top Of Page

This type of interview includes situational questions (see Situational Interviews for examples) as well as questions regarding job knowledge, job simulation and work requirements. This is generally used in roles that required detailed knowledge of a subject. Some examples might include:

• Explain the concept of present value and provide an example of a business application.
• Human resources technicians are required to administer pre-employment written exams and read exam instructions to the candidates. Please read these exam proctor instructions to us as if you were reading them to a large candidate group.
• Please describe your previous work experience preparing detailed financial reports.

Behavioral Interview | Top Of Page

Interviewee's are asked to describe situations where they have demonstrated a particular behavior. This interview typically includes questions where you are asked to demonstrate when you were both successful and unsuccessful in specific situations.

The best way to prepare for this type of interview is to think of, and write down, examples from your work history of different scenarios. Come up with more than one example of each scenario. Companies that conduct behavioral interviews do so consistently and you do not want to use the same scenarios for each interview. Some typical behavioral interview questions might include:

• Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
• Give me an example of a time when you were able to successfully communicate with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).
• Tell me about a situation or project that did not go very well. What did you do? What learning did you take from this situation and what would you do differently if confronted with a similar situation?
• Tell me about a situation when you recognized a problem before others in the organization. What was the problem, how did you recognize it, what action did you take and what was the outcome?
• By providing examples, convince me that you can adapt to a wide variety of people, situations and environments.
• Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
• What have you done in the past to contribute toward a teamwork environment? Or what role do you normally end up playing within a team?
• Describe a major project you have recently lead? What was your approach to its planning and implementation? What were the results?
• Describe an instance when you had to think on your feet to extricate yourself from a difficult situation.

When responding, be detailed and specific. Usually during behavioral interviewing, the interviewer will be operating under the premise that "past performance in a similar setting is the best predictor of future performance."

The best way to accomplish this is to use the three-step STAR process, or

- Situation or Task
- Action
- Result or outcome.

For example, you might recount a time when employees were continually complaining about the computer system (situation). To resolve the problem, you organized a user group consisting of technical staff and the computer users to discuss the issue (action). Morale then improved as did the lines of communication (result). Using this three step STAR process is a powerful way for you to frame your experiences and accomplishments for the interviewer.