Interview Questions: Surprising Questions

Many interviewers will ask direct interview questions in these areas:

1. Coping
   Provide an example of a time at work when you knew expectations of you were unreasonable. Was your behavior mature or immature? And how?


2. Tolerance of Ambiguity
   Explain a time in your professional life when you were successful in dealing with an unstructured work environment.


3. Problem Solving
   Think of a time when you defined several solutions to a problem. How did you find the solutions and then choose the best one?


4. Goal Setting
   Describe a time when you followed a systematic process to define your goals and objectives.


5. Commitment to Task
   Hard work is necessary to achieve any goal. Provide examples of when you had to work hard to reach a goal. Be specific about your achievement.


6. Interaction
   Describe a time in your career when you helped someone else while building a good work relationship.


7. Creativity
   Provide an example of a time when you were inventive and explored new ways of working through a situation.


8. Versatility
   Everyone has encountered difficult coworkers. Explain the situation and describe how you handled the person and learned to work with them.


9. Reading the System
   Getting results often requires working within the politics and organizational climate. Describe a time that you had to read the situation and adjust to get the job done.


10. Team Building
    Describe a time when you created group commitment to goals by building teamwork and morale.


11. Decision Making
    Provide an example of a time when you resisted the temptation to jump to the first solution and gathered all the facts before making a decision.


12. Leadership
    Describe a time when your example served as a model for others to follow.