Seizes opportunities, welcomes challenging assignments and has a sense of purpose; focused, goal driven — and excels in acting with confidence and initiative.
Questions
1. What’s been your biggest disappointment in your job? How have you responded?
2. Explain how you’ve maintained your motivation and professional standards during periods of heavy workload and/or reduced workforce?
3. How do you maintain your patience and stay cooperative when dealing with irate, uncooperative people?
4. Have you ever experienced the failure of a major project or the rejection of your point of view? How did you respond?
5. Describe how you continued to persevere in your job when you experienced a lack of adequate funding or suffered equipment breakdowns.
Adapts to new challenges, adjusts to fluid change, and limber in their thinking in the face of new realities — or just the inevitable ambiguities and uncertainties of organizational life; demonstrates flexibility in addressing changing demands; capable of juggling multiple demands without losing their focus and energy.
Questions
1. Describe how you adjusted when priorities or procedures were changed.
2. Describe a work situation when you interacted with people from different cultural, social and economic backgrounds. Were you effective? How?
3. How have you remained effective in your job when you experienced changes such as reorganization, a new supervisor, new procedures, legislative changes or conflicting priorities?
4. Have you ever had to move from one group to another? What adjustments did you have to make?
5. What strategies would you use in a small group meeting if there were divergent opinions or solutions proposed to solve a problem?
6. Have you ever had the primary mission of your job or a task change completely in a short period of time? What did you do?
7. Describe a major change that occurred in a job that you held. How did you adapt to this change?
8. Describe a situation in which you had to adjust to changes over which you had no control. How did you handle it?
9. Describe a time that you had to adapt to a difficult situation.
10. What do you do when priorities change quickly? Give one example of when this happened.
Delivers clear presentations, actively listens and prepares well-written documents; practices and encourages the open expression of ideas and opinions.
Questions
1. Give an example of a time when you were able to successfully communicate with another person even when that individual may not have agreed with your perspective.
2. What have you done to improve your verbal communication skills?
3. Talk about a time when you had to give feedback to a colleague or supervisor. What was the situation? What did you say? What was the outcome?
4. Keeping others informed of your progress/actions helps them feel comfortable. Describe your methods for keeping your supervisors and/or colleagues advised of the status of projects.
5. Describe a situation in which you were able to effectively "read" another person and guide your actions by your understanding of their individual needs or values.
6. Describe a situation where you felt you had not communicated well. How did you correct the situation?
7. How do you go about explaining a complex and/or technical problem to a person who does not understand technical jargon? What approach do you take in communicating with people?
8. What kinds of communication situations cause you difficulty? Give an example.
9. What steps do you take to insure adequate understanding of information by different audiences when you are communicating?
10. Give two examples of presentations you were required to give and how you accomplished them?
11. What complicated concepts, ideas, policies or practices have you had to explain?
12. When do you prefer written communication versus oral communication?
13. How do you evaluate and edit your own writing for grammar, spelling, style and content?
14. What has been your most difficult writing assignment and why?
Acts based on their perceptions of the feelings, skills, competencies and needs of others; nurtures give-and-take relationships which enhance understanding and mutual respect; acknowledges the needs and feelings of others; focuses on the positive aspects of conflict and values differences.
Questions
1. Describe a situation when you dealt with a frustrated colleague or supervisor.
2. Describe a time when you witnessed a colleague treating another colleague in a way you didn’t agree with.
3. Describe a time when you observed someone you worked with provide a “random act of kindness” beyond their job description.
4. How do you determine a colleague’s feelings? What do you do then?
5. How do you show recognition of good work done by others?
6. Describe some situations when colleagues came to you to discuss problems. How do you handle such situations?
7. Describe a situation where your actions caused a problem for someone else. What could you have done differently?
8. Have you ever been in a meeting and realized that your behavior was causing a problem? How did you handle this?
Works well under pressure and/or against opposition; stays positive in a stressful work environment.
Questions
1. What parts of your current job do you find most stressful?
2. Describe a stressful situation you were involved in —such as a project with time pressures, an extremely difficult project, or dealing with an irate colleague.
3. Under what tight deadlines are you currently working?
4. Describe an emergency in which you were involved? How did you stay calm?
5. How do you reduce your own stress level on the job?
Thoroughly, accurately, dependably accomplishes tasks with concern for all elements involved, no matter how small.
Questions
1. How do you insure that all parts of a task, both large and small, are accomplished without any of them being overlooked?
2. Give some instances of a time when you found errors in your work. How did you find them? How did you correct them?
3. Describe a situation in which some aspect of a project or task was overlooked. What were the causes of the omission and what were the results? How did you correct the mistakes?
4. Describe a situation when a project you were working on did not meet established deadlines. What caused the delay(s)? What did you do?
5. How do you stay on track when you are constantly interrupted while working on a project?
6. Describe a situation where you had the option to leave the details to others or you could take care of them yourself.
7. Do prefer to work with the "big picture" or the "details" of a situation? Give me an example of an experience that illustrates your preference.
8. Have the jobs you held in the past required little attention, moderate attention, or a great deal of attention to detail? Give me an example of a situation that illustrates this requirement.
9. Describe a difficult experience you had in working with details.
10. Tell us about a situation where attention to detail was either important or unimportant in accomplishing an assigned task.