Which interview questions should I master?

In conjunction with some of the more general questions that we have listed above, you will also need to prepare yourself for behavioural style questions. These are the questions that begin with ‘Tell me about a time’ or ‘Can you provide me with a specific example of when’ or ‘Describe your specific involvement with’… These questions may seem difficult to answer, but if you are well prepared and think about examples that are relevant, not only in your recent work history but also from your past experiences, they are actually the ones that give you the best opportunity to really prove yourself. There is a lot of information online to help you prepare for and understand these questions but there are 2 main factors that we think are important to consider:

1. If you have a look over the job ad, job description, brief from your Recruitment Consultant or other information relevant to the role you are applying for you will be able to identify the core competencies that will be assessed. For example, if one of the points on the job description is ‘you will be responsible for handling complex matters and developing effective solutions on behalf of your Manager’, the core competency required would be problem solving. So think back through your work history about some positive and successful times that you have effectively problem solved in preparation for questions around this. Evaluate what the top 5 core competencies are for the role and prepare examples for each of these.

2. The best way to structure an answer to a behavioural based questions is to break it up in to three parts – situation, action and result. Give the interviewer a brief understanding of the situation you were in by providing some limited background information. Then focus predominantly on explaining the action that you personally took and why you made the choices to handle the situation that you did, with a brief end to the answer giving the outcome or result of your actions. And remember the result doesn’t always have to be a good one! Sometimes the best learning that we encounter is due to things not going quite to plan or turning out differently than expected. As long as you show that you learnt from the scenario and put things in place to ensure you improved for next time, this can also be a positive response.