Description: A short article about behavioral questions at a job interview
Instructions: Read the short article and answer the questions
Behavioral Questions at a Job Interview
After going through five job interviews as a receptionist, I have found that many employers today are asking behavioral interview questions in addition to conventional questions about specific technical skills. Behavioral questions usually focus on your ‘soft skills’ or those aspects of your personality that enable you to work well with others and survive tough situations.
The interview questions regarding ‘soft skills’ for these five jobs are somewhat similar because the nature of these jobs is all related to administration work and customer service. The following questions were asked.
1 To be a competent receptionist, what qualities do you think that she should have?
2 Have you ever come across an angry customer in your previous job. If you did how did you handle it?
3 In our daily office work it is very busy. Tell me about a high-pressure situation you’ve been in the past. What happened, and how did you cope?
4 How can the receptionist help by being culturally sensitive in an educational institute?
5 One day you get into the office, three things all come at once. An agent would like you to provide some information about your institute, some documents need to be done this morning and one student is waiting at the airport and calling you to pick him up. What are you going to do? How do you prioritize your work everyday?
6 How did you get along with your colleagues and superiors? Tell me about a time when you had a disagreement with someone at work. How did you do it?
7 How do you cope with stress in your work?
8 To be a good administrator, you must have a high level of accuracy. How can you achieve this?
9 Tell me about a significant failure and how did you fix the problem?