Interview Guide

Preparation Checklist
Introduce yourself, call your name and position in the company.
• Explain the purpose of the interview:
1. To learn more about the background (origin) of the candidate and his suitability for the position:
2. Help the candidate to understand the position and organization.

Work on current position

 What are your main responsibilities?
 What were the changes in responsibilities?
 What do you like most in your job? What do you like least of all?
 What attracted you to this work?
 What were your achievements in work?
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PLANNING AND ORGANIZATION

Questions:
1. How do you understand the meaning of the word “planning”? Describe how you plan your activities.
What steps do you consider in this process? How do you prioritize? What do you consider an
unexpected case?
2. What methods do you use when planning your workweek? (What is your daily action plan?)
3. Give an example of a planned activity where unexpected case may change your plan. (What need to
consider? How will this affect your priorities? What steps will you take?)
4. Tell me what your schedule was recently. Describe how you plan the provided time, what goals do
you set? What is the result?
5. How important is tracking progress to meeting goals for you? Is it important for you? Why is it
important? How do you do it? What would you like to improve?
6. Give an example where you foresaw of expected difficulties before doing a big volume of work.
What were the difficulties? Why did you expect these difficulties?
7. Give an example when you planned something and got perfect result only because you planned it
properly.

Effective Behaviors:
· Meets deadlines
· Keeps track of completed and on-going activities
· Manages own time effectively
· Develops reporting systems
· Sets priorities
· Develop contingency plans
· Develop systems to ensure quality of outputs
· Develops long-term plans critical to the organizations success

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Exhibits disorganization
· Has difficulty staying focused on results
· Often bogged down with details and finding it difficult to “see the forest for the trees”
· Is inflexible to change once plans are established
· Allows the business to develop without any controls.
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PASSION FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

Questions:

1. Did you do something over your job duties? Something that was not included in your duties.
2. Customers can be very demanding. Tell me about a time that you received an unreasonable request
from a customer (Why was it unreasonable? What did you do to resolve the issue? Was the customer
satisfied? How did the customer react? What was the impact on the customer?)
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 3. Tell me about the most that you have ever done to try to satisfy a particular customer!
4. Tell me about a time when you effectively dealt with a customer complaint!
5. Sometimes, we all wish we could change how we interact with customers. Tell me about a recent
interaction that you wish you could change.
6. Despite of that fact that we may do everything possible to satisfy a customer, it always seems that
some will complain about how they were treated. Tell me about the last customer who complained
about the service you provided.
7. Tell me about a time that you were able to respond to an internal/external customer’s request in a
shorter period than expected. Compare that situation with a time you failed to meet an
internal/external customers’ expectations. (What was the difference?)
8. Did you see that someone from our company provided bad service? What did you do? How do you
feel when you see that someone from our company provides bad service to customer?
9. Example from your experience. Who is your best customer? Why did you provided him best service?
Why is it important to provide good service?

Effective Behaviors:
· Listens to and empathies with customer needs
· Understands customers business environment
· Remains professional and helpful when interfacing with customers
· Correct customer’s problems promptly
· Follows through on customer inquiries, request and complaints
· Frequently exceeds customer expectations

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Tolerates poor customer service without taking action
· Leaves others to address customer needs without providing support
· Waiting for the internal or external customer to contact you when a problem or question arises
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IMPACT & INFLUENCE

Questions:
1. Tell me about a situation where you had to convince a colleague (or a customer) about your
preferred way to do something in a specific issue. (How did you manage? What arguments did
you use? What made you use these specific arguments? What was the result of the discussion?)
2. Tell me about a situation where you have found it hard to convince someone else. (Why was it
hard to convince the other person? What was the learning? How would you have handled it
today?)
3. How are you going to impact on employee who provide poor performance? What kind of
arguments will you use? How are you going to convince them to improve performance?
4. Strike case. Group of people stopped to work and started to create problems. Business stopped.
How are you going to resolve this problem?
5. Give an example of when you are faced with resistance in the team? What did you do?
6. What do you think there are ways of impact on the employee? Give an example when you had to
somehow affect the subordinate? How did you do it?
7. How to be or become example for people? How do you think? What need to do to be example for
your team? What should you be? Who should you be?

Effective Behaviors:
· Uses direct conviction in a discussion
· Tries different tactics when attempting to convince
· Knows who to approach and contact to get decisions made
· Builds rapport and establishes credibility with senior management
· Calls on the help of others to influence directly
· Assembles coalitions or builds “behind-the scenes” support in order to increase their chances of influencing others

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Overlooks the need to build commitment or persuade others
· Doesn’t take time to put their point of view across
· Fails to gain the support of colleagues

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 · Be antagonistic towards other parts of the business
· Giving up after a single attempt
· Using the same argument over and over
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TEAMWORK
Questions:
How can you explain the term "teamwork"? How do you understand it?
1. How do you understand “Teamwork”? Why do we need Teamwork?
2. Tell me about one of the most successful teams that you were part of this. What made the team so
effective? What was your role and contribution to the success of the team?)
3. From time to time, all of us have to deal with someone who wastes our time at work. Tell me about a
situation you have had like that! How do you deal with them? How do you handle it?
4. Tell me about a time when you were able to help your team members to solve a problem! What did
you do?
5. Please give me example when you was a member of the team and your team achieved best result
only because you worked together as a team.
6. Tell me about a time when you had to receive cooperation from a group or individual in order to
achieve a goal or complete a task. (When you got one task with someone together).
7. Tell me about a situation when a peer/team member strongly disagreed with your ideas or actions.
(How did you handle the situation? What was the result?)
8. Your vision. What is the main important things in teamwork? What kind of rules the members should
follow? What should be inside of the team? What kind of relations?
9. Do you consider yourself a team player? What does it give you? Is it important for you to be a
member of the team? Why?

Effective Behaviors:
· Helps others where he can
· Keeps colleagues informed about relevant information
· Values others input and expertise
· Acts to promote a friendly climate
· Builds working networks
· Shares best practices with colleagues from other entities
· Builds relationships across countries and regions
· Acts and thinks from a multi-functional background

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Believes working with others produces results more slowly
· Attends team meetings without contributing
· Regularly engaged in win-lose competition with other members of the team
· Expresses negative expectations and opinions about team members
· Fails to contribute to issues outside own immediate focus
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BUILDING & LEADING TEAMS

Questions:

1. Who is teamleader in your point of view? What kind of character qualities should he have?
2. What is the difference between boss and teamleader? What qualities a team leader should have?
3. Imagine that you appointed on leader position and got team? How are you going to build the strong
team? What steps are you going to do?
4. How do you get your team to work for common goals? (Can you give me an example? What was the
situation? What did you do?)
5. Can you give me an example of how and when you created enthusiasm in your team for a change in
the organization? (What kind of change was it? How did you handle it?)
6. Tell me about a time when your team has acknowledged in the organization as a very strong and high
performing team! (What happened? What was your contribution? What was the learning?)
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 7. Give me an example of a time when you had to set objective for your team members. How did you
set them? How did you ensure that they understood? What feedback did you receive regarding these
objectives?
8. Imagine that two employees have a conflict and all members of the team are suffering. What will you
do to remove the conflict?
9. Tell me about a situation when you found it difficult to direct the work of a team. What made this
difficult? How did you try to overcome these difficulties? What would you do differently next time?
10. How much have you been involved in the training and development of your staff? How did you go
about developing them? Describe the impact this had on your team’s performance. How important is
staff development in your view? Why?

Effective Behaviors:
· Creates a sense of shared accountability for accomplishing the organizations objectives
· Encourages and empowers teams to achieve and to make decisions
· Creates enthusiasm and an enjoyable team atmosphere at work
· Develops open communication down the line and promotes the sharing of ideas between team members
· Actively manages the relationships between team members (conflict handling, decision making) and eliminates internal
competition
· Organizes regularly team meetings.

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Fails to delegate responsibility to team members
· Dominates the team process
· Allows unproductive team working
· Is not consistent or fair with employees
· Keeps important information for self
· Does not recognize team successes
· Does not participate in team events
· Provides personal/sensitive information about team members to other team members
· Creates needless tension within the team
· Over delegates without providing necessary managerial follow-through
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ADAPTING TO CHANGES & TOLERANCE TO STRESS

Questions:

1. Sometimes we have to work under new rules procedures we do not agree with. Tell me about the last
time when you disagreed with a new changes. How did they affected you and how did you handle it?
2. Every job has its stresses. What condition in your job has been the most stressful for you? (Why?
How did you react?)
3. Working with people from different backgrounds or cultures can be a real challenge. Can you tell me
about a time that you faced a challenge adapting to a person from a different background or culture?
(What happened? What did you do? How did it affect you?)
4. How quickly do you adapt to new changes? How do you do it?
5. Can you do several tasks at the same time (multiple task job)? Give me an example when you did id
successfully. How did you do it?
6. Have you ever been in a new working situation when you had not enough time to prepare? Give me
an example. How did you react? What happened? How did you feel after?
7. We all have times when the pressure at work is extremely high. Describe a time like this in your past
work experience. (How did you react?)
8. Describe a time when you faced conflicting work demands. (What were those conflicting demands?
How did you respond?)

Effective Behaviors:
· Is open to different views and change
· Recognizes the validity of others viewpoints
· Works constructive under pressure and stress
· Adapts quickly to changing situation and changes own behavior or approach to suit the situation
· Handles disruptions effectively in order to meet deadlines

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· Initiates change to improve business processes
· Protect innovative ideas
· Keeps in perspective the true significance of stressful situations and does not overreact
· Maintains focus on ultimate goals
· Is able to handle multiple tasks at the same time without losing composure
· Maintains composure when working with upset, hostile or difficult colleagues
· Expresses emotions in an appropriate manner
· Able to meet strict and demanding deadlines

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Rejects the untried and untested
· Needs security, stability and predictability to feel confident
· Demonstrates a rigid commitment to follow rules, procedures and policies
· Lose temper and blames others for being unable to perform in high-pressure situations

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HOLDING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE

1. When judging direct report’s performance, what factors are most important to you? (Tell me about a
time when you used those factors in evaluating a specific employee)
2. At one time or another, everyone is pressured to sacrifice quality in order to get work done on time.
Tell me about a time that happened to you. (What did you do?)
3. Sometimes a manager’s/supervisor’s evaluation differs from our own. When has that happened to
you? (What did you do about it?)
4. Describe a time you knew that a process or operation was performed poorly. (What did you do?
What effect did your action have?)
5. Describe a time when performance was below expectation. What did you do?

Effective Behaviors:
· Gives adequate directions
· Sets clear limits for the behavior of others
· Says “no” to unreasonable requests
· Checks and controls the achievement of goals
· Consistently follows through on commitments
· Demands high levels of performance
· Confronts others openly and directly about performance problems
· Fires or moves people who consistently fail to reach required performance standards

Ineffective Behaviors:
· Allows individuals and groups to not deliver against promises
· Fails to provide clear direction to direct reports