Last Updated on 2021-01-17 by ppcguybklyn
When the blog first opened, I wrote a series of articles about interview questions. The two articles discussedbasicandprofessional questions. In addition to basic and professional questions, Behavioral Questions are often encountered when applying for a job in the United States. These questions are designed to understand the interviewer’s work attitude and working methods based on different situational problems. This type of question is not easy to prepare because the types of questions the interviewer will ask may have several variations. I want to use this article to sort out a few Behavioral Questions that I think are most likely to be encountered and the most difficult to answer, and how we should deal with these questions.
STAR Method
Before discussing the types of questions, there is a certain way to answer these questions that must not be ignored, and that is the STAR Method. This is a response strategy specifically used to answer interview questions. The main method is to divide the answers to the questions into four parts:
Situation
Task
Action
Result
When answering the Behavioral Question, the structure of this answer can be used to efficiently and clearly tell the interviewer: What are the challenges we face in each different situation, and what actions we have planned based on these challenges, and what results did we bring to the company or department?
After a brief introduction to the STAR Method, the following are the Behavioral Questions that I think are often encountered in interviews and are difficult to answer:
Q1: What do you like least about your current job?
The main purpose of this question is to know the interviewers’ preferences for the work environment, whether they are satisfied with the status quo, and whether they have enough motivation to pursue a new job. The difficulty in answering this question is that we must not let the interviewer think that we are only complaining about our current situation. No supervisor will want to hire someone who loves to complain, so we must weigh our answers carefully when answering.
A more appropriate way to deal with it is to give a practical example after telling what you don’t like at work, and briefly talk about how to arrange and handle the projects you are responsible for in an environment that you don’t like at work and what positive impacts you bring to the company. Through examples, the interviewer understands that we are not only complaining, but we will make appropriate plans for the status quo so that we can complete the work at hand even if we do not like the current situation in the company.
If you want to switch to an obviously larger company from a smaller one, you can also answer that the current dissatisfaction with the job is the limited growth. In the future, you hope to be able to handle larger customers or cases. In addition to showing your ambitions for your future career, it can also let the interviewer know that we are really interested in the current job interview, which is a safer answer.
Q2: Have you ever had conflicts with your boss or colleagues, and how did you resolve them?
The difficulty of this question is similar to the previous one, which is to avoid sounding like complaining about your boss or colleague when answering the question. The part of conflicts with colleagues or bosses can be quickly brought over, as long as the interviewer can clearly know the situation at the time, the focus of the answer should be on how to resolve the conflict and the positive impact on the work after the problem is solved.
When faced with questions about negative emotions at work or with colleagues, I think we must come up with a few examples for backup. If you answer "I get along well with my colleagues and have never had a conflict" or "I am very satisfied at my current job, there is nothing particularly disliked", I don't think it will work. In addition to making us look like a yes-man, we don’t show our determination to apply for a new job like an interviewer. If the current job is so good, why would we want to change jobs? So no matter what, you must answer as much as possible, and bring the topic to your motivation for applying for such a job.
Q3: Tell me about your experience when you made mistakes at work
The difficulty of this question is that if we have any experience of making mistakes at work, it is usually caused by negligence or poor communication. If we need to mention our past related experience in the interview, this story would possibly make the interviewer think we are not capable enough. So before answering this question, it is very important to choose examples carefully.
On the other hand, this question is similar to "What is your biggest weakness?" The answer is also to focus on how we can overcome this wrong experience, and correct or repair the loss caused by this experience to the company or department, learn from this experience and further advance our work ability.
Q4: What comment do your boss or colleagues give you?
This question not only allows the interviewer to understand how the applicant gets along with others in the workplace, but also knows whether the interviewee currently reflects on his or her abilities from the perspective of others. When answering this question, I think it’s very important to try not to exaggerate your strengths too much, because in fact, whether a person is bragging during the interview, sometimes it is very easy to be seen by the interviewer. Use a more objective point of view to describe what kind of employee we are in the eyes of our boss and colleagues, and at the same time tell us the strengths and weaknesses that we have demonstrated at work, so that the interviewer can more fully understand our ability and attitude at work. It is a more appropriate answer.
Similar to the previous questions, this question can also use the STAR framework, using a problem-solving or project implementation experience to present a specific example, simply describe how you arrange and plan, and what impacts you have brought. Finally, use the boss or colleague’s comments on this experience to conclude this question. Using practical examples to discuss other people's evaluations of us in the workplace can give interviewers a more complete understanding of our abilities.
Q5: The biggest challenge in the past
Different from the question of how to make a mistake in the past and how to be more diligent from your own mistakes, the challenge of this question does not have to be a negative experience. It is likely to be a difficult customer, colleagues with different personalities or work styles, hard to integrate into the company’s culture, etc. Sometimes it is not even necessary to answer what happens in the workplace. As long as it can be regarded as the biggest challenge, it can be the answer to this question.
There are two key points in answering this question. The first one is what we regard as a major challenge. It also tells the interviewer our ambitions in career development and the attitude to deal with things. How to choose appropriate examples depends on the company you apply for, and it is very important to choose the right examples to answer the questions. The second focus is to return to the STAR framework, how we deal with challenges when faced with challenges, and the final results and results for us or the company.
Q6: Experience in handling multiple projects at the same time
Whether you can work with multiple tasks at the same time has become one of the important indicators for distinguishing ability in the current workplace. Almost every company's job vacancy will need to be responsible for multiple projects, or need to do several different jobs in the same working day, so interviewers will almost certainly ask if you have relevant multi-tasking experience. The difficulty of this question is that almost everyone will answer the same way: evaluate the importance and urgency of the project and the work, and prioritize these projects or tasks accordingly. How to make our answers stand out from other competitors is the focus. At this time, if we can have a practical example to prove our time and project management ability, we will be more dominant when answering questions.
