Sample Interview Questions

Phone Screen

1. Tell me what you know about our company.
2. Tell me what you know about our industry.
3. What are you looking for in your next position?
4. What interests you about working for our company?
5. What makes you a good fit for this position?
6. Describe the company culture of your ideal workplace. / What type of company culture do you work best in?
7. What is your management style/how do you like to be managed?

Warm-up Questions

1. In three minutes or less, tell me about yourself. Start at the beginning.
2. How did you first hear about our company?
3. What is it that interests you most about this role?
4. Tell me about how your presence would make Shang a stronger company?
5. What are three adjectives that describe you?
6. How comfortable are you with excel, on a scale of 1 to 10?
7. What is it that interests you about living in Beijing?
8. If I were to talk to your past supervisor, what would he or she say you do well? What would he or she say is an area of improvement? Would you agree with his or her assessment of your work?

Behavioral Questions

1. Performance Based Interviewing (PBI) Sample Questions
2. Tell me about a time when you effectively managed your team to achieve a goal. What did your approach look like? (Follow-ups: What were your targets and how did you meet them as an individual and as a team? How did you adapt your leadership approach to different individuals? What was the key takeaway from this specific situation?)
3. Tell me about the best position you’ve had, and why it was great?
4. Tell me about a time you had difficulty working with someone (can be a co-worker, classmate, client). What made this person difficult to work with for you? (Follow-ups: What steps did you take to resolve the problem? What was the outcome? What could you have done differently?)
5. Tell me about a time when a mistake you made affected other people. (Follow-ups: How did your teammates respond? What did you do afterward to prevent it from happening again?)
6. Tell me about a time your behavior had a positive impact on your team. (Follow-ups: What was your primary goal and why? How did your teammates respond? Moving forward, what’s your plan?)
7. Describe what is a stressful situation for you? What is your worst case scenario and how do you cope with it?
8. If you were made the manager in your last position, what would you have changed?
9. We have all faced a time in our lives when we had to be pulled away from work for personal reasons (i.e. sick child, family emergency, etc.) – how did you handle this?
10. Tell me about a situation when you had to go above and beyond your call of duty in order to get a job done?
11. Tell me about the last time you had to motivate yourself when you no longer wanted to keep working on a project?
12. Tell me about a project that did not go well or failed.
13. Could you tell me about a time when you displayed excellent attention to detail.
14. Tell me about how do you manage your time well while juggling multiple responsibilities.
15. What do you rely on when times get tough?
16. Tell me about the last time that you received some feedback that was difficult to take, and how you dealt with it.
17. Tell me about a project you are really proud of and why
18. Describe the last time you learned how to do something new.
19. Tell me about a time in your life when you failed at something. It can be anything; personal, professional or whatever you are comfortable with. I want to know the personal process you went through to cope and deal with failure and how you course corrected. And no, don’t twist this question into one of those my greatest weakness is actually a virtue type answer
20. What has been one of your most frustrating experiences?
21. What is the dumbest risk you've ever taken? The smartest?
22. What are two of your personal strengths?
23. What are two of your personal weaknesses?
24. What are you most proud of and what are you least proud of? (sometimes it’s a four-part question, because they’ll give something personal and professional for each)
25. Tell me about a project that you started.
26. In many projects, it’s important to keep records of details while still managing the big picture. Can you tell me about a project where you could do this effectively? How were you able to make sure that everything got done properly? How did you keep yourself focused on the larger goal?
27. What kinds of skills you hope to gain over the next 2 to 3 years and what are you doing to gain those skills?
28. If you would have the chance would you prefer to work with the “big picture” or the “little details” of a situation? Can you share an experience that illustrated your preference?
29. What was the most stressful situation that you've ever been in?
30. Did you ever find errors in your work. What was the cause for it? What steps did you take to correct them?
31. Tell me about a time when you had to adjust to someone’s way of working to achieve a goal or complete a project?
32. Describe a time when you worked for a company and you felt you were not a good fit with the culture. Why was it a bad fit?

Company/Cultural Fit

1. Think of something you've done in the past: what would you have done differently?
2. What book/article/podcast/MOOC should everyone at our company read?
3. Tell me about what your ideal boss and colleagues would be like.
4. If money were no object, what would your ideal job be?
5. Based on what you’ve learned about Shang so far, what do you like best about the company?
6. If you were instantly promoted to be the CEO of our company what would be the first thing that you do?

Wrapping up

1. Do you have any questions for me?