Notice how this question is subtly different to “can you handle stress?” Reply with: “I break my work down into smaller steps and work through those steps rather than get worked up over the bigger picture.”

Or: “I tend to see problems arising before they become too large to handle and I make contingencies to cover them.”

Q. How long have you been looking for work/another position?

If you’ve been unemployed for a while obviously the employer is going to think… “Why didn’t anyone want them in all that time. If they were any good they’d already have found a job by now.”

An important point: businesses are fuelled by innovation and solving customer’s needs and problems. They’re not fuelled by the amount of hours their employees work.

You’re not there to work 40 hours a week. You are there to reach and attain certain goals. So, your best answer to the question is along the lines of… “I don’t want just any old job. I’ve been using my days researching companies I’d most like to work for and where I feel I could grow and develop my skills and be a key member in the company’s success. I’ve also been studying and reading to give myself more skills to add more value to my chosen career.”

You could go on to explain that you knew this would go against you because of the length of time you were out of work, but you realized that your whole future relied on what you did now and you were willing to take that risk.

Q. Have you ever been fired?

Try to answer “NO.”

If you have been and are asked about it, explain why, and what you learned from the experience. If other people were fired with you or resigned because of a change in management, then explain that as well.

Q. In your last position what duties did you perform?

This question is to see whether you are goal or task oriented.

Tell them what you did and what it meant to the company: “Part of my job involved typing letters to customers to nurture them. This involved establishing an intimate knowledge of our customers needs. It also took up a lot of time but I got around this by establishing a clever database for merging that sped up the process significantly.”

This shows you are goal oriented… that you believe in getting the job done and not just in being busy. Task oriented people believe in simply being busy. Employers want goal-oriented people.

Q. Can we check your references?

This question is often asked to put you off guard. This is especially true if you come across as being too perfect, or too smooth.

If you already have a job and are considering changing tell the interviewer they can check your references if you receive a firm job offer as you want to keep matters confidential at the moment.

If they want to check your present employer for a reference, make sure they give you a written job offer first. The last thing you want is to miss out on this job and arrive back at work and have your present employer find ways to dismiss you for lack of loyalty.

Q. Tell me about yourself?

Make sure you answer this question in a way that benefits the employer. They are looking for honesty, integrity, being a team player, punctuality and goal orientated people. If you are going to talk about anything don’t ramble on and on – talk about one of the subjects I’ve just shown you.

You can always ask: “What area of my background are you most interested in?” Their response allows you to tell them what they want to hear.

Q. Why do you feel you are a better ……………… than the other applicants?

This is not the time to put down other people nor is it the time to brag about how great you are.

You have a few options. The first is to say something along the lines like “to many people, being a ………………… is just a job. To me it’s something I’ve always wanted to be. Being a ……………. is more than a job to me – it’s a passion and that passion comes through in my work.”

The other option is to say you never worried about being better than the rest. You’ve only considered being the best you can be. Go on to tell them you think these skills are the most valuable for the position and then show them how you use these skills to be incredibly productive and a great team member.

by Acland Brierty

SHAMELESS PLUG: Job Secrets Revealed comes with a special ‘interview secrets’ report that will give you – more secrets of the experts including sections on “behavioral interviewing”, an expanded section on understanding the mind of the employer and the Top 10 list of the “Things Interviewers Fear,” as well as the complete list of the toughest interview questions you’ll ever get, including advice on how to side-step the ones you won’t want to answer. Plus, we give you powerful techniques to let you take control of the interview.

Rate your skills on a 1 to 10 scale, with ten being the highest.

Note: Give a rank 8 or above all key skills and at least above 5 for all asked skills. When explain why, emphasis your experience and accomplishments in previous jobs.

1. Please rate your Interpersonal Skills. Why?

2. Please rate your Writing skills. Why?

3. Please rate your PL/SQL development skills. Why?

4. Please rate your knowledge of Oracle. Why?

5. Please rate your database design skills. Why?

6. How confident are you that you can learn an ERP and become highly skilled in it? What is your approach to learn a new software or system?

Basically tell how have you acquired new skills successful in the past. Answer with enthusiasm, give examples, say something like, “In my last job, I knew nothing about Siebel on the first day to work, but I spent a lot of time to learn the system and read all the manuals during weekend. After a week, I was able to develop new applets and business components in the system.”

7. How do you lead the effort to plan and jump-start a new IT project?

Describe the eerily phases of project management, such as analysis, build use case, documentation, don’t forget the mention that you always want to spend to time to get to know stack holders, customers, and clients and build good relationship with all parties involved in the project, and understand their needs, …

8. How do you resolve conflicts and issues when there is a disagreement among different parties involved in the project?

First analyze what is the disagreement and what’s behind it. communicate with all parties and provide an environment to let them understand each other. Have a specificaiton review, have an open discussion, there are many way to resolve conflicts and reach aggrements.

9. Based on your experience, please describe 3 factors that are the most critical to the success of an IT project?

This question has open answer. In general, to make a successful project you need to (1) have a good team to cover all functionalities through the project lifecycle, — analysis, design, development, testing, project management, IV&V, etc., (2) support and understanding from upper management, which means continuing communication with managements through the project, and (3) implementing the right technology for the project, — considering robustness of the technology, available resources for implementing the technology, and cost of ownership.

10. If you have completed all of your tasks in daily work, what would you do?

Think of what your employers expect you to do. Helps other team members, get additional tasks for the project, documentation, looking for improvements, learning new technologies, self-training, etc.

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Project Highlight

The goal of the project is to build a consolidated data system that supports high-quality government program evaluations. This system should provide an efficient, flexible, and secure means of maintaining longitudinally-linked public funded program data and promote good data management practices with respect to data systems and issues across participated agencies. This position works as the technical lead through the project.

Position Highlight

The Senior Information Systems Analyst is the expert technical specialist on the implementation of database, data access, and distribution technologies and will lead efforts involving the evaluation, implementation and maintenance of these technologies for the data integration/consolidation project. Expected skills include but are not limited to database administration with Oracle, SQL and PL/SQL programming, and data planning.

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1. With keeping this in mind please give your experience and education that you think qualifies you for this position.

This is a “Tell me about yourself” question. Using your prepared answer with emphasis on database skills.

2. What database design and data modeling experience do you have, and what tools have you used?

Talk about database design lifecycle, — analysis of business entities, data modeling, create ERD, logical database design, and physical database design. Mention big data design tools such as Oracle Designer and ERWin.

http://www.it-job-interview.com/database-design_125.html

3. What is your database administration experience in configuring Oracle or other RDBMS for OLAP and decision support system?

If you don’t have much knowledge about OLAP and DSS database in specific, just mention that the database software provides options in installation to let you setup database for OLAP/DSS purpose. Database servers like Oracle can be easily re-configured from OTAP to OLAP if necessary. Here’s a little more technical detail: OLAP and DSS database support intensive query and data retrieval, therefore, many tables need to be heavily indexed in order to achieve expected performance. For Oracle database, data files may be placed on different disks and tables may be partitioned across different tablespaces to increase concurrent access. In same cases, data may be denormalized for analytical purpose. Specific Oracle features such as bitmap index, materialized view, etc. may be implemented.

4. Please provide your experience in software programming and database development using 4GL, SQL, scripting, or general languages?

You name it, C++, Java, VB, JSP, ASP, SQL. The most important is to describe your Oracle PL/SQL experience in detail, that’s what really required for sure.

5. Describe your experience in evaluating and selecting technologies and software tools best suitable for a systems development/integration project?

Mention both technological and business considerations. Express your concerns of long term effects such as cost of ownership and resource availability.

6. What methodologies, procedures, or tools have you used for planning a data integration project?

In fact, there is no standardized methodology for data integration. Data integration project is different from software development project, but you can borrow some of software development lifecycle concept to answer this question. Quick some new data integration tools have come to the market, such as SAS DataFlux. Even if you have never used any data integration tools, you can just give your knowledge about these tools, — telling what these tools can help on the project.

7. What are your considerations on business and technical aspects if you are asked to analyze a data consolidation project which brings enterprise data from multiple business functions and platforms to a centralized RDBMS?

This is a tough one, and hard to prepare. On the business, you should talk about what’s behind the drive of data consolidation. In general, data consolidation is driven by achieving better data accuracy, data availability, and reducing data redundancy. On technical side, you need to talk about how to achieve the business goal, – it involves data analysis, planning, data modeling, architecture design, data conversion, etc.

8. Do you have any experience in data acquisition, data migration, and/or data mapping using either ETL (extract, transform, load) tools or customized data conversion solutions?

Easy question. If you used any ETL tool such as InforMatica, say so. Otherwise explain how you developed customized solution, i.e., Oracle SQL Loader, SQL and PL/SQL programming, batch scripting, Perl scripting, etc.

9. Describe your knowledge or experience in data warehousing lifecycle?

If you are not sure what the answer is, check this out:
http://www.it-job-interview.com/data-warehousing-lifecycle.html

10. Please describe your experience preparing written documents? Who was your audience?

Tons of. Technical specs, functional specs, tech doc, user manual, proposal, training instructions…

11. Please describe how you have worked with a team to accomplish a project?

Make sure you say you can do both. You can work independently to get the job done, you also enjoyed working with a team. You can be an effective team leader, or you can be a team member to support the synergy effort.

12. This position has a lot of responsibility and several tasks often come at you at once with all of them having high priorities. How do you deal with this type of a situation and what tools have you used to help you manage your tasks to ensure nothing gets left out?

Say you always use effective communication to resolve conflicts. Microsoft Project Manager is a good tool to mention.

As always, near the end of the interview, you’ll be asked “Do you have questions for us?” and then “Do you have last comments” . Search our website to get answers for these questions and make a last impression.

Some of questions in this interview are quite challenging, but they are equally challenging to everyone. Try your best.

PERSONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS

1. Please tell me about yourself.
2. How would you handle rejection?
3. Who or what had the greatest influence on your life?
4. How would you describe yourself?
5. What are some of the greatest personal challenges you have faced during your lifetime?
6. What are some of your personal goals, and have you achieved them?

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

1. What skills and abilities do you possess that will help make you successful in today’s job market?
2. Please discuss some of your past leadership roles and your accomplishments in them.
3. Please describe a frustrating experience from school or work, and tell me how you dealt with it.
4. How do you interact with people around you (i.e. leadership, communication, socializing, etc.)?
5. Why should our organization hire you?
6. For you, what are some of the pros and cons of working on a team project?
7. Have you ever supervised someone in a similar position with another organization?
8. How would you describe your supervisory style?
9. Who was the most difficult person you have ever dealt with, and how did you respond?
10. How did you organize your time in school/work/play?
11. What are your major strengths and weaknesses?
12. What personal factors do you consider most important when evaluating yourself?
13. In what organizational structure do you function best?
14. What organizational techniques do you use on a daily basis to accomplish your academic, work, and social goals?
15. Please tell me about your communication skills, your personal skills relevant to work experiences, and your problem-solving abilities.
16. Please describe your leadership style.
17. What skills and/or special qualities do you possess for this job that would make you stand out from other candidates?
18. How well do you work with others?
19. What skills and abilities do you bring to this job?
20. Please list three personal attributes that you would like to improve, and tell me any efforts you’ve made to make improvements in these areas.
21. What do you see as your greatest challenge when starting a new career?
22. How would your friends describe you? What motivates you to put forth your greatest effort?
23. In what areas are you working to improve?
24. Who are two people you admire and respect the most, and why?
25. What aspects of your job at the XYZ organization were most frustrating?
26. If you could create the perfect job for yourself, what would you be doing?
27. What is special about you that you feel would make you an attractive candidate for our organization?
28. How would others describe your weaknesses?
29. How do you organize your time?

CAREER GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

1. What are your long range goals and objectives?
2. How are you preparing to achieve them?
3. What are your goals and aspirations for the next three years? five years? ten years? What are your short and long-term goals?
4. What are your standards of success/goals for a job?
5. Are you goal oriented?
6. Why do you think you would be good at this profession (sales, retailing, marketing, etc.)?
7. Please describe your ideal job.
8. Why are you interested in this industry/ profession/ occupation?
9. What are your career interests?
10. What work would you like to do that really interests you?
11. In what environment do you want to work?
12. What geographical location interests you most when working?
13. Please tell me about your plans for the future.
14. What is your timetable for achievement of your current career goals?
15. Do you prefer theoretical or practical problems?
16. Why do you want to work for XYZ company?
17. In this organization, where do you see yourself in five years?
18. Please tell me five things about yourself that would make you an asset to any organization that hired you.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES AND COLLEGE EXPERIENCES

1. With what extracurricular activities have you been involved?
2. Please tell me about your accomplishments in extracurricular activities.
3. What have been your greatest challenges for improvement of a campus organization?
4. What do you enjoy doing most?
5. Please describe your most rewarding college experiences.
6. Please cite examples of the challenges you experienced during your leadership positions with campus activities.
7. If you could relive your college experiences, what would you do differently?
8. What changes would you make in your overall campus life?
9. During your campus activities, what positions did you hold?
10. What were your major responsibilities in these organizations?
11. What did you like best/least about these positions?
12. Did you have an opportunity to work as a member of a team? If so, please explain.
13. What were some of the problems you encountered?

HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS

1. Are you creative?
2. I am writing a book entitled “101 Everyday uses for the Common Red Brick.” Can you give me five uses for the common red brick?
3. Please look at this photograph of an electronic gadget, because you would be working with others to enhance its capabilities. It operates a helicopter hovering over an ocean platform. What are some concerns that you would place on your checklist to consider before you started this project?
4. What could you see as the major objectives of this job?
5. If you were hired by our organization, how would you identity the major roles and responsibilities of your new position?
6. What roles and responsibilities have you accepted in work, social, and other activities?
7. What is your purpose in life?
8. For what companies have you worked, and were they good or bad, and why?
9. What have you admired in people who have previously supervised your work?
10. What haven’t you admired in these individuals? (In general, questions related to work ethic and value systems might also be posed.)
11. In your opinion, what does it take to be effective in sales or marketing?
12. What are your personal motivational techniques?
13. How would you resolve conflict in a group situation?
14. If you were given this assignment, how would you proceed?

ACADEMIC PROGRAMS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

1. Why did you choose this major field of study?
2. Why did you choose your particular college or university?
3. What were your favorite college courses, those you liked most? Least? Why?
4. Please tell me about accomplishments in your academic program that are relevant to your future career goals.
5. What is your grade point average (GPA)? How do you feel about this?
6. Should grades be used as an indicator of future career potential when an organization is considering new college graduates?
7. What were your reactions to instructors or college faculty during your academic program?
8. How would you relate your academic accomplishments to future career aspirations? How satisfied are you with your accomplishments in this academic program?
9. What electives did you take outside of your major?
10. Why did you choose these courses?
11. What was the most difficult aspect of obtaining a college degree?
12. What are your academic strengths?
13. What courses gave you the most difficulty? If you could, what changes would you make in your school’s academic program?

WORK EXPERIENCES

1. What prior work experiences have you had?
2. What were your accomplishments in these prior work experiences?
3. What were your most significant achievements?
4. What problems did you experience while on the job?
5. What would your last two employers say about you as an employee, either good or bad?
6. What projects were accomplished during your time on the job?
7. How were these accomplished?
8. What experiences did you have when meeting deadlines for project completion? What can you tell me that you enjoyed most about your previous job experiences? Least?
9. Can you tell me about your toughest job assignment?
10. Please tell me about a conflict situation and how you resolved it.
11. What life experiences have given you the greatest reward?
12. What one experience proved to you that you would be a capable manager?
13. Please elaborate on one of the work experiences listed on your resume.
14. Please tell me about the duties/requirements of your last job.
15. What did you see as your major strengths and/or weaknesses on this job?

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

1. In addition to your educational and professional experiences, what else would you like us to know about you in order to make an appropriate decision?
2. Please tell me about some of the accomplishments you achieved during college and which make you the proudest.
3. How did you finance your education?
4. What are your greatest achievements at this point in your life? Of what accomplishments are you most proud?

RELOCATION/TRAVEL

1. Are you willing to relocate?
2. Do you mind traveling?
3. How do you feel about relocating during a career with XYZ Company?

KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORGANIZATION

1. Why did you select XYZ company?
2. Why do you want our training program over others?
3. What are your expectations of the XYZ company?
4. Why do you want to work in the position you are seeking?
5. What attracts you to this industry? Other industries?
6. Why are you interviewing with XYZ company?
7. What do you know about our company?
8. Who else are you interviewing in your job search?
9. Why did you choose to interview with our company?
10. What personal qualities do you bring to this firm?

SALARY AND BENEFITS

1. What starting salary do you expect as an employee?
2. What company benefits are most important to you?
3. How do you feel about an income made up totally of commissions?
4. When comparing one company offer to another, what factors will be important to you besides starting salary?
5. How important is starting salary to you when considering our company’s job offer?

Source: Scheetz, L. Patrick. 1989. Recruiting Trends 1989-90. East Lansing, MI.: Collegiate Employment Research Institute, Michigan State University, p. 27-30. $25.