Examples of interview questions and answers

A. Personal Motivation 1. What motivates you in your job? What do you like and dislike about your current job?
I feel motivated when the effort that I have poured in on any particular challenging assignment gained recognition by my superiors. Not that Im proud of myself but when your jobs done get noticed and recognized you feel that you bring a significant value in the organization. In the current job the environment is very competitive but my fellow working colleagues are helpful to me and to each other and this creates an encouraging atmosphere in the company. This is what I like the most. My scope of work is currently office-bounded and theres little opportunity for me to travel to meet clients or expose myself to external training. This is the only opportunity that is lacking here.

2. Please share a situation where youve really gone to use up all your ability and energy to accomplish your task.
On the eve of Hari Raya Haji in 2003 I and a team mate were completing a technical report to be submitted at the end of the day to client. It so happened that the PC that we were working on crashed down due to power failure. After getting the PC working again, all the information in the report was lost. My colleague was supposed to be on board for his bus trip back to Port Dickson but I persuaded him to stay until we finish it. By the time we finished at 11pm he already missed his bus. What I did was driving him all the way from PJ to Port Dickson, and drove back to my village in Ipoh afterwards and reached home on the morning of the Raya. Our energy was drained but we both glad we did the right thing.

3. What was the biggest mistake you have done in your career; what you did afterwards to remedy it? Was the result positive?
I left my first job to join company x due to a significant offer on the salary. However I realized that I had not been learning much from the company and I only lasted for 6 months. Then I realized money is not everything in pursuing your career. Job satisfaction and the experience you gain is far more important. Since then I do not rush into making decisions before I made a thorough research before deciding to move on.

4. What is your most important contribution in your current company?

Last year I led a team conducting an audit on our internal Human Resource processes. We have found significant flaws in the recruitment flow and suggested a revamp on the process that cut the cost by 40% and speed up the process at a faster rate. It has now become a blue print for standard recruitment strategies in our company.

5. Describe a situation where your motivation level is at a very low point. What was the situation? Why?
Last year my company underwent a minor downsizing and as a result, a lost a number of working colleagues that were very close to me. It is sad to lose them, but life has to go on. I learnt that life is not always on the up. It somehow affected my work as my motivation is low but I came off well after 1 month.

B. Analytical 6. From your point of view, what are the current challenges and issues in the industry that youre currently in?
Human resource field is now exposed to outsourcing in which we have increasing number of international and local players jumping in into the business. However, a number of them are not well positioned to be in human resource outsourcing as theyre not competitive enough and will deviate the high standard set by big corporations like us. Their presence will cause a stir as people will infer that theres little point for them to engage in human resource outsourcing provider as they will fear that they will not be getting results.

7. What is the biggest challenge in your current employment?

The biggest challenge is to ensure our Human Resource operation achieve the companys objective to help cutting the cost and expenses as failure to do so will result in the abolishment of our department to be handled by a 3rd party outsourcing body.

8. What can you contribute (short term & long term) if you join our organization?
I am a specialist in the recruitment but at the same time well versed with the industrial and labor relations, payroll administrations using various systems like PeopleSoft, EasyPay and others as well as the compensation and benefits field. I have not only knowledge but also hands-on operation in those said areas. This makes any organization easy to move me around within the whole spectrum of Human Resource functions. I can assure you that I will contribute my knowledge and experience in all those areas.

9. Who do you see yourself 5 years down the road? How do you plan to achieve that?
I will see myself spearheading a number of HR staff, ranging between 10-15 people and a key person in the human resource department for a large conglomerate like your organization. I am already in the right track but I always plan to improve myself further on my leadership capability and keep myself abreast in all changes and areas of HR. I have what it takes to be a people leader.

10. What youve learnt in your current employment?

The people that you work with will shape your future direction as they are the ones that you communicate each and every day. I learn about the importance of people compassion and the appreciation of their presence as theyll help you in your quest to reach your career height. This lesson is by far the most important thing that I've learnt.

C. Project Management 11. Explain about the recent project that you have been involved recently. What were your roles and responsibilities in this project? What was the biggest challenge during the completion of this project? Is the project successful?
As I mentioned before last year I led a team conducting an audit on our internal Human Resource processes. The biggest challenge is when you made a new discovery that traditionally against the companys practice and you wanted to voice out, few would listen to you in your first attempt. You have to work hard in order to get your message across. We have found significant flaws in the recruitment flow and suggested a revamp on the process that cut the cost by 40% and speed up the process at a faster rate. It has now become a blue print for standard recruitment strategies in our company. Yes, the project was a roaring success.

12. What is the most challenging aspect working in a team? Why?

The biggest challenge is to ensure everyone works professionally without any personal vendetta towards each other, especially when they feel they have been outdone by someone else, or have their ideas turned away. In reality this is almost a myth since people have emotions and it will be difficult for you to keep a zero defect on this.

13. What are you key strengths and weaknesses? What do you do in order to overcome your weakness? How effective is your action?
I am very careful and thoughtful in every decision that I make, and I took responsibility for what I do. Thats my strongest character that I have. But being too careful sometimes contributes to my weakness. Occasionally when I care so much about making decision it makes me not courageous enough to take some risks. This is due to the fact that I feel that I am not ready to make any mistake. Sometimes I feel that I am trying to be "too smart" rather than being realistic. To remedy this, I started to get myself close to books and literature about risk taking and failure. Last week I read this interesting book by Billi Lim entitled Dare to Fail. I started to realize that its not that bad at all when you make mistakes, as long as you learn from them.

14. How do you describe your working style?

I am a planner; I decide what I want to achieve write down all the objectives that I want to achieve daily, monthly and yearly as well as the upcoming events in my work diary. I do not start any project without any plan in my hand. I also work meticulously; I ensure that my work is done fast but with accuracy. I will not start my work before picturing the start and the end.

15. How would your boss describe you?

He will describe me as an enemy of procrastination, as I always completed my work within the timeline, and he knows that I always stray away from any job-unrelated activities like smoking, lengthy phone conversation, personal emails and so on.

D. Leadership and Conflict Resolution 16. Describe a situation where you were in the middle of a conflict and what were your actions to resolve the conflict? Indicate the results of your actions.
A couple of weeks back, a staff came to me and confronted some issues regarding his overtime claims. The fact that I was not the one in charge of claim made the situation worse as I was not in a position to give him the right explanation. However, sending him to the right person will not make the situation better as he was in no mood to compromise. So what I did is to go through the staffs detail problem and promise him to have this settled by tomorrow or else he can report to my superior. On the same day I went to see my colleague who was in charge of claims, went through the problem and get the cheque out for the staff the next day. It wasnt an easy process, but I managed to pull that one out and keep every one happy.

17. What do you think the most important quality that a leader needs to have and how you would measure the effectiveness of this trait?
I believe the most important quality is your ability to exercise your authority on the right time. The rest of the time a leader should be close to the subordinates and get to know a bit about their personal and social life and offer helps when necessary. A good leader who has this ability will earn respect from the peers and from their subordinates, at the same will be a likeable person out of office.

18. Given an authority, what would you change in your current organization?
I wish to give those staffs which are office-bounded like me to have more exposure in the outside world, thus I will send them to see clients or vendors with our sales or field people. They will grow much faster if theyre able to interact not only with internal staff but external parties. I will also enable job-rotation exercise whereby each employee will get a chance to work on areas where they have interest in and learn to appreciate each other's roles and increase their values.

19. How would you approach your superior that has made a decision where you strongly believe is not the right one? Give a specific example of the situation you have encountered.
First, I will ask him or her whether he has thought of any other options other than the one that they have made. Normally, theyll ask ourselves back whether we have better solutions, giving me the right opportunity to table the right solution to go through with them if we follow their solution or mine. This persuasion technique is effective because we make it as if we make the decision together and not purely based on individual. I encountered this situation a couple of times during our audit time back last year; I use this technique and it worked wonders.

20. What is your biggest non-academic achievement that youre mostly proud of?
Being awarded Employee of the Year for my company in 2004 is the highlight of my career and is undoubtedly the biggest non-academic achievement that Im mostly proud of to date.