*UPDATE* The full list of all 893 Behavioral Interview Questions is Now Available! *****
Well, this is the last batch of Behavioral Interview Questions that I have for ya’ll… I am quite sure it should be enough to keep any sane (and probably insane) person busy for quite some time. (https://richardstep.com)
…and who knows… maybe I’ll have a nice big Christmas present for ya’ll pretty soon. :)
Until then, enjoy another 200 whoppin’ questions to get you prepared in your carerr/job hunt – it really does help to practice… give it a shot!
Click Here to Learn How to Answer These Questions and More
Attibutes | Questions |
Information Monitoring | • Tell me about a time when you failed to give your team or member of your team the information needed to do the job you asked of them. |
Initiative | • Describe a time when you took the initiative to do something that needed to be done, even though it wasn’t really your responsibility. What circumstances prompted you to act? |
Initiative | • Tell me about a time when you turned down a good job. |
Initiative | • What projects have you started on your own recently? What prompted you to get started? |
Innovation | • There are many jobs in which well-established methods are typically followed. Give a specific example of a time when you tried some other method to do the job. |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • Give me an example of a time you had to make an important business decision that still affects you today. |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • How do you involve your manager and/or others when you make a decision? |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • Tell us about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision. |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • What kinds of challenges did you face on your last job? Give an example of how you handled them. |
Leadership | • Tell me about a strategic initiative or opportunity you identified and pursued. |
Leadership | • Tell me about a time you missed an opportunity to provide a direct report with recognition for a significant accomplishment. Why did you miss it? What did you do when you realized you missed it? |
Management | • Give me an example of a time you had to deal with a highly emotional direct report. |
Organizational Awareness | • Tell me about a time that you consciously chose not to play corporate politics. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Give me an example of a time you had to put a critical task or project you were working on aside to attend to the needs of a direct report. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about a big project you had to plan work for. How were you able to manage your time and the work load? |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me the process you used last year (or this year) to set your department goals. Were the goals accomplished? |
Practical Learning | • Tell me about a time when you had to learn something new or difficult in a short amount of time. What created the situation? What did you have to learn? How did you learn it? |
Safety Awareness | • Describe a time when you identified a potential safety issue and addressed it before a problem occurred. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Describe a time when you agreed to implement someone else’s idea over your own. How did you approach the situation? How did you feel about it? Was it a successful implementation? Why/why not? |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Provide an example of a time when it was critical that you establish an effective working relationship with an individual or group outside your department to complete an assignment or deliver a service. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Tell me about a time you got involved in a cross-functional activity simply to develop a better working relationship with those involved in the activity. |
Technical/Professional Knowledge | • Give me an example of a time where you prevented, identified, or solved a problem with a piece of equipment.Click Here to Learn How to Answer These Questions and More |
Tenacity | • All jobs have unpleasant tasks. Tell me about the most unpleasant tasks you were required to do at work. Why or why weren’t you successful in getting it done? |
Tenacity | • Tell me about a time when you had to finish a job even though everyone else had given up. |
Tenacity | • Tell me about a time when you were unwilling or unable to make the sacrifice necessary to achieve a goal. |
Work Standards | • Tell me about a time when you were asked to complete a difficult assignment even though the odds were against you. What did you learn from that experience? |
Adaptability | • Tell me about a time you uncovered new information that affected a decision that you had previously made. |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • Have you ever had a situation where you had a number of alternatives to choose from? How did you go about choosing one? How did you assemble the information? How did you review the information? What process did you follow to reach a conclusion? |
Coaching | • Tell me about a time your boss coached you to improve your performance or to learn something new. |
Communication | • Tell me about a time in which you had to use your written communication skills in order to get an important point across. |
Communication | • Tell us about a time when you had to present complex information. How did you ensure that the other person understood? |
Customer Service Orientation | • Building a rapport with some people can be challenging. Give an example of a time when you were able to build rapport quickly with someone in your organization, even though the situation was a difficult one. |
Customer Service Orientation | • Everyone has said something to a customer that they wished they hadn’t. Tell me about a time you did this. What did you do to correct the situation? |
Customer Service Orientation | • Give me an example of when you initiated a change in process, procedure, or operations in response to customer feedback. |
Delegation of Authority & Responsibility | • How did you keep track of delegated assignments? |
Information Monitoring | • Tell me about a time when your ability to explore “what if” scenarios enabled you to address a significant/major problem from occurring. |
Innovation | • Describe a time when you facilitated a creative solution to a problem between employees. |
Innovation | • Tell us about a problem that you solved in a unique or unusual way. What was the outcome? Were you satisfied with it? |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Tell me about a time you won (lost) an important contract. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • What do you do to show people that you are listing to them? |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • Discuss an important decision you have made regarding a task or project at work. What factors influenced your decision? |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • Give me an example of a situation where you had difficulties with a team member. What, if anything, did you do to resolve the difficulties? |
Leadership | • Summarize a situation where you took the initiative to get others going on an important issue, and what you did in a leading role to achieve the needed results. |
Leadership | • Tell me about a time when you anticipated the future and made changes to meet these future needs. Did the anticipated future occur? |
Leadership | • Tell me about a time you lost track of the vision/mission/purpose of your team/department/organization and it turned out to have repercussions. |
Management | • Every now and then there is a position that is hard to fill. Tell me about the last time you had to deal with that. Why was the position hard to fill? How did you overcome that obstacle? |
Organizational Awareness | • Describe a time when politics at work affected your job. How did you handle the situation? Were you successful? |
Organizational Awareness | • Describe how your position contributes to your organization’s/unit’s goals. What are the unit’s goals/mission? |
Organizational Awareness | • Tell me about a time you were able to accomplish something that was important to you through the use of your informal network. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Describe a situation where, due to time and resource constraints, you submitted a report or completed a project where the quality was compromised. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Developing and using a detailed procedure is often very important in a job. Tell about a time when you needed to develop and use a detailed procedure to successfully complete a project. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Give me an example of a time where you underestimated a resource you needed to get a task or project done, but managed to overcome the shortage and be successful. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about your system for controlling errors in your work. |
Practical Learning | • Give me an example of a situation at one of your previous employers when others knew more than you did. How did you close the gap? |
Practical Learning | • Tell us about a recent job or experience that you would describe as a real learning experience? What did you learn from the job or experience? |
Practical Learning | • We all have disappointing business experiences. Tell me about one you had and what you learned from it. |
Quality Orientation/Attention to Detail | • Tell me about a time you had to pay close attention to the tiny details in order to be successful. |
Risk Taking | • Give me an example of a time when there was a decision to be made and procedures or policies were not in place. What was the outcome? |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Describe a time when one of the members on your team did not complete (or wasn’t doing) her fair share of the work. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Give me an example of a time where you were willing to compromise on something relatively important to you in order for the team you were a member of to proceed with a project. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Sometimes the only way people or departments can accomplish their individual goals is to form a partnership. Tell me about a time where, had you not partnered, your individual goals might not have been achieved. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Tell me about a time you were recognized and rewarded for being a valuable team member. |
Tolerance for Stress/Energy | • Give me an example of a time you worked particularly well under a great deal of pressure. How did you handle the situation? |
Tolerance for Stress/Energy | • Tell me about a time you had to work with conflicting, delayed, or ambiguous information. What did you do to make the most of the situation? |
Tolerance for Stress/Energy | • Tell us about a time when your supervisor criticized your work. How did you respond? |
Work Standards | • Sometimes people will drag their feet in taking action on something, losing precious time. Tell me about a time you saw that other people in the organization were not acting quickly on something and you took it upon yourself to lead the effort. |
Adaptability | • Describe a situation when you had to give feedback to someone who was not accepting of others. |
Adaptability | • Describe a time you were able to make your voice heard in a predominantly opposite-sex-dominated environment. |
Adaptability | • Tell me about a time when you had to stop working on a project/idea/assignment and start working on a completely different one. What did you do? How did that work out? |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • Tell me about a problem that got out of control before you discovered it and you began working on a solution. |
Communication | • Tell me about a time you might have been more successful in your communication of an idea, had you taken time to think about how a higher level management person or group liked to receive information. If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently? |
Communication | • Tell me about an oral presentation you made to a group within the last year. What was the most difficult aspect of the presentation? |
Communication | • Tell us about a time when you had to use your verbal communication skills in order to get a point across that was important to you. |
Customer Service Orientation | • Describe for me something you were involved with in the community through which both the community and businesses located in the community benefited. |
Customer Service Orientation | • Give me an example of a time when you were a good listener. |
Customer Service Orientation | • What have you done to improve relations with your customers? |
Delegation of Authority & Responsibility | • Give me an example of a time you did a poor job of delegating a task or project. |
Delegation of Authority & Responsibility | • Give me an example of a time you encouraged a direct report to make a decision within her area of responsibility that did not work out well. What happened? What did you do? What was the final end result? |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Describe for me the process and steps you went through to develop one of your most difficult employees. Was it successful? Why or why not? |
Developing Organizational Talent | • How do you manage cross-functional teams? |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Tell me about a time you had to provide constructive feedback to an employee who was not meeting performance expectations. Why was the employee not meeting expectations? (NOTE: Listen for whether the person accepts responsibility for developing employees or places the blame solely on the employees.) |
Information Monitoring | • Give me an example of a time you provided a direct report with information that helped her make a good decision. |
Information Monitoring | • Tell me about a situation where you dealt effectively with another person’s inappropriate use of humor. |
Information Monitoring | • Using a specific example of a project, tell how you kept those involved informed of the progress. |
Initiative | • Describe a project or idea that was implemented primarily because of your efforts. What was your role? What was the outcome? |
Initiative | • Describe a situation where you responded proactively. |
Initiative | • Tell me about a time when you pushed yourself to do more than what was necessary. |
Initiative | • Tell me about something new or different that you did in your department that improved customer service, productivity, quality, teamwork, or performance. |
Innovation | • A lot of times we use tried-and-true solutions to solve problems and it works. Tell me about a time when the tried-and-true solution did not work. Were you able to solve the problem? How? In what ways was that solution different from the tried-and-true solution? |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Describe a situation in which you were unable to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see/do things your way. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Give me an example of a time you had to convince others to conform to a policy, practice, or procedure you didn’t believe in. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Tell me about a situation where you had to persuade someone to accept your idea or proposal. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Tell us about a time when you had to convince someone in authority about your ideas. How did it work out? |
Leadership | • Describe a leadership situation you would handle differently if you could do it over again. |
Organizational Awareness | • Give me an example of a project that best describes your organizational skills. |
Organizational Awareness | • Give me an example of a time where your understanding of your own emotions–and of the triggers that set off emotional responses in you–saved you from doing or saying something in a business setting that you might have regretted. |
Organizational Awareness | • Give me an example of a time you solved a problem in ways that addressed total system needs rather than just your immediate situation. |
Organizational Awareness | • Tell me about a time you felt your team was under too much pressure. What did you do about it? |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Describe a time when you had to make a difficult choice between your personal and professional life. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Give me an example of a time when your schedule was suddenly interrupted and your plans for the day completely changed. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Give me an example of a time you were unable to complete a project on time. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about a time when you had to sacrifice quality to meet a deadline. How did you handle it? |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about a time you were particularly effective in prioritizing tasks and completing a project on schedule. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • There are times when we work without close supervision or support to get the job done. Tell us about a time when you found yourself in such a situation and how things turned out. |
Quality Orientation/Attention to Detail | • Tell me about a time when you paid too much attention to the details and not enough to the big picture. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Give me an example of a time you successfully built a project team from scratch. What was the project? How did you go about selecting team members? How did you get these individuals to work as a team? What was the hardest part of getting them to work as a team? Was the team successful on the project? |
Adaptability | • Give me an example of a time that your priorities were changed quickly. What did you do? What was the result? |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • Give me an example of a time you identified a potential problem and resolved the situation before it became serious. |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • Have you ever been in a situation where you had to settle an argument between two friends (or people you knew)? What did you do? What was the result? |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • There are times where there is an incredible amount of data and information to be analyzed. Tell me about a time you faced this situation and exactly what you did to boil everything down to what was most important. |
Communication | • Describe a time you were able to provide a higher level management person with recognition for the work she performed. |
Communication | • Describe for me a time when you might have been more successful at something had you taken the time to clarify the expectations in a working relationship. |
Communication | • Tell me about a situation where you had to work closely with a difficult coworker in order for you to successfully accomplish something. Did you make it work? How (or why not)? |
Communication | • Tell me about a time when your dislike for an individual had a negative impact on your ability to communicate effectively with this person. |
Communication | • Tell me about a time you had to handle a highly emotional person. |
Communication | • Tell me about a time you were able to establish a rapport with a person that others referred to as “difficult”. |
Communication | • Tell me about a work-related decision you made or a situation you handled where, if you had it to do over again, you would do something different. |
Communication | • Tell us about a recent successful experience in making a speech or presentation. How did you prepare? What obstacles did you face? How did you handle them? |
Communication | • Thinking of the most difficult person you have had to deal with, describe an interaction that illustrates that difficulty. Tell me about the last time you dealt with this individual. How did you handle the situation? |
Customer Service Orientation | • What, in your opinion, are the key ingredients in guiding and maintaining successful business relationships? Give examples of how you made these work for you. |
Developing Organizational Talent | • By way of example, convince me that you can get more done in less time than others. |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Describe your procedures for evaluating direct reports. |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Have you ever had a subordinate whose performance was consistently marginal? What did you do? |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Tell me about a time you failed to develop someone to adequately prepare her for a task, project, or responsibility. |
Follow-Up | • Managers quite often delegate major projects to their direct reports. Tell me about a time when you did that and how you kept informed about the status of the project. |
Initiative | • In your last or current job, what problems did you identify that had previously been overlooked? Were changes made? Who supported the changes as a result of your ideas? |
Innovation | • Describe a time when you came up with a creative solution/idea/project/report to a work problem you had been dealing with for some time. |
Innovation | • Tell me about a time you had tunnel vision when looking at a project, issue, or problem. |
Innovation | • What innovative procedures have you developed? How did you develop them? Who was involved? Where did the ideas come from? |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Describe a situation in which you were able to positively influence the actions of others in a desired direction. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Give an example of your ability to build motivation in your co-workers, classmates, and even if on a volunteer committee. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Tell me about a specific experience of yours that illustrates your ability to influence another person verbally. Use an example that involves ___________ (e.g., changing an attitude, selling an idea, changing a process/procedure). |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Tell me about a time you needed to get cooperation from someone in another department for you to be successful on a task or project. |
Judgment/Problem Solving | • How often do you have to rely on information you have gathered from others when talking to them? What kinds of problems have you had? What happened? |
Leadership | • Describe a time when one of your direct reports was under a great deal of pressure or stress. What did you do in the situation? What was the outcome? |
Leadership | • Give me an example of something you did that helped build enthusiasm in your staff. |
Leadership | • Tell me what you have done on a consistent basis to ensure that your direct reports feel valued for their contributions? |
Management | • How do you handle performance reviews? Tell me about a difficult one. |
Management | • On occasion we are confronted by dishonesty in the workplace. Tell me about such an occurrence and how you handled it. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Describe a time when your plan didn’t work out. Why didn’t it work? What did you do to recover? Were you successful then? If you had to do it over again, what would you do differently? What did you learn from this? How have you applied what you learned? |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell us about a time when you were particularly effective on prioritizing tasks and completing a project on schedule. |
Quality Orientation/Attention to Detail | • Give me an example of a time where your attention to detail helped you avoid making a mistake.Click Here to Learn How to Answer These Questions and More |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Describe for me a time when you saw a situation very differently from someone else and disagreed strongly with him, but still respected his viewpoint. |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • There are times when people need extra help. Give an example of when you were able to provide that support to a person with whom you worked. |
Tenacity | • Give me an example of when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done. |
Work Standards | • Tell me about a time when you were not pleased with (or were disappointed in ) your performance. What did you do about it? |
Adaptability | • Give me an example of a time when your tightly scheduled day was interrupted and thrown way of schedule. |
Adaptability | • Tell me about a time you had to adapt to a wide variety of people by accepting or understanding their perspectives. |
Adaptability | • Tell us about a time when you did something completely different from the plan and/or assignment. Why? What happened? |
Adaptability | • What do you do when priorities change quickly? Give one example of when this happened. |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • Describe a situation where you had to use confrontation skills. |
Analysis/Problem Assessment | • How do you typically deal with conflict? Can you give me an example? |
Communication | • Describe a situation where, because you were aware of the nonverbal dynamics of a person or group, you adapted your communication and turned the situation around. |
Communication | • How do you keep your manager informed about what is being done in your work area? |
Communication | • Tell me about a time where you didn’t document something that you wish you would have. |
Customer Service Orientation | • Describe a time you exceeded the expectations of a client/customer/stakeholder. |
Customer Service Orientation | • Tell me about a customer whose needs you spent considerable time learning about. What was the result of the time investment? |
Delegation of Authority & Responsibility | • Do you consider yourself a macro or micro manager? How do you delegate? |
Delegation of Authority & Responsibility | • Tell me about a time when you chose to trust a direct report or peer with key project deliverables. Did the individual perform as you expected? |
Initiative | • Tell me about a project or idea–not necessarily your own–that was implemented successfully primarily because of your efforts. |
Initiative | • Tell me about a time you reached out for additional responsibilities. |
Initiative | • Tell me about one of your workplace improvements that another department now uses. |
Innovation | • Give me an example of how you have been creative in completing your responsibilities. |
Innovation | • What have been some of your most creative ideas? |
Integrity | • Describe an occasion when you bent one of your core values or beliefs during a bad time. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Sometimes the only way to resolve a defense or conflict is through negotiation and compromise. Tell about a time when you were able to resolve a difficult situation by finding some common ground. |
Leadership | • Relate a scenario where you were responsible for motivating others. Were you able to do it? How? |
Leadership | • Tell me about a time when you needed to give feedback to an employee with emotional or sensitive problems. |
Management | • Some people are more difficult to work with than others. Give me an example of how you have worked with the most difficult direct report and how that differed from how you worked with the most accommodating direct report. |
Management | • What kinds of decisions are most difficult for you? Describe one? |
Organizational Awareness | • How have you adjusted your style when it was not meeting the objectives and/or people were not responding correctly? |
Organizational Awareness | • Tell me about a time when you misread an organization’s culture. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • In some aspects of work, it is important to be error free. Describe a situation where you tried to prevent errors. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about a time when you wasted the time of someone else working on something that was unimportant to the organization, but important to you. |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about a time where you were off-target on assessing the human resources you needed for a project. Why were you off-target? |
Planning & Organizing/Work Management | • Tell me about a time you got bogged down in the details of a project. |
Practical Learning | • Give me an example of something that you have done in the past to improve yourself. |
Safety Awareness | • In many situations, employees are required to wear protective equipment, and may find it uncomfortable, cumbersome, or inconvenient to wear. Tell me about a time this was true for you. (NOTE: Make sure you find out what equipment it was, why the person did or didn’t wear the equipment, and the factors that contributed to the decision.) |
Teamwork/Collaboration | • Describe a time when you were able to build team spirit in an environment of low morale. |
Technical/Professional Knowledge | • Give me an example of a time where, by using your understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, you were able to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. |
Technical/Professional Knowledge | • Give me an example of something that you learned from your boss that has helped you in your career. |
Technical/Professional Knowledge | • How do you go about explaining a complex technical problem to a person who does not understand technical jargon? What approach do you take in communicating with people? |
Technical/Professional Knowledge | • Tell me about a time when your industry knowledge alerted you to an upcoming challenge or opportunity, and where you were able to develop a proactive strategy to deal with it. |
Tolerance for Stress/Energy | • Describe a time where you were faced with problems or stressful situations that tested your coping skills. What did you do? |
Work Standards | • Describe a challenging project that you’ve worked on. |
Work Standards | • Give me an example of something you’ve done in previous jobs that demonstrates your willingness to work hard. |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Many of us have had to deal with a situation where an employee was a good performer for a period of time, but whose performance has started slipping. Tell me about a time you had to deal with this kind of situation. |
Developing Organizational Talent | • Tell me about a major project you managed. How did you assign tasks to your direct reports? How did you monitor progress? How did you measure success along the way and in the end? |
Innovation | • Tell me about a time when you created a new process or program that was considered risky. |
Integrity | • Give me an example of a time that you failed to walk-the-talk at work. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Describe for me a situation where two individuals or parties were at odd, and you helped negotiate a win-win solution. |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Have you ever had to ?sell? an idea to your co-workers or group? How did you do it? Did they “buy” it? |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Have you ever had to persuade a group to accept a proposal or idea? How did you go about doing it? What was the result? |
Interpersonal Skills/Influence | • Tell us about a time when you were able to successfully influence another person. |
Leadership | • Tell me about a time where your vision of the future was so inspiring that you were able to convert nay-sayers into followers. |
Leadership | • What have you done to develop the skills of your staff? |
Quality Orientation/Attention to Detail | • Tell me about a suggestion you made to improve the processes or operations in your position or within your team. |
Tenacity | • Tell me about a time when you were unable initially to sell an idea to your boss, an employee, or a peer, and so you tried again. What did you do differently the second or third time? |
Tolerance for Stress/Energy | • Describe for me a time when your team was under a fair amount of stress. What did you do to help them through this? Were you successful? |
Tolerance for Stress/Energy | • Give me an example of a time that you did something so silly that you had to laugh at yourself. |
Thanks a ton for reading this far! :)