Interviewing for a new position can be an intimidating process. You try to prepare as best you can by reviewing your resume, thinking about what questions might be asked and how you’ll answer them, and practicing your responses. Then you find out this is a behavioral interview, and you’ll be asked situational interview questions.

What’s a situational interview question?

• There are two types of situational interview questions: past experience questions and circumstantial questions.
• For past experience questions, you are asked to provide a negative situation from your own experience, and detail how you successfully resolved it.
• For circumstantial questions, you are given a specific set of circumstances or challenges and asked how you would create a positive outcome from them.

How do you prepare for these types of questions?

Interviewers use past experience questions because they believe that your past behavior makes a good indicator of your future behavior on the job. The interviewer wants to know how you’ve tackled previous challenges.

They’ll ask you to tell them about a difficult situation you’ve faced in your past work history – one that is relevant to the question being asked – that you resolved successfully.

Think of some examples before the interview, review those situations, and analyze them. What steps did you take? What words did you use? Become so familiar with your actions, and those of the others involved, that you can give the interviewer very specific details and demonstrate your knowledge of what it takes to create a positive outcome.

Part of the reason employers use circumstantial questions is to gauge your ability to think on your feet. For these questions, the interviewer will create a challenge for you to solve. It may be a situation you actually have faced in your work history, or you may be required to respond to a hypothetical scenario.

This can be difficult if you’ve never dealt with such challenges before, but use the same structure: specific actions leading to specific results, all handled in a smooth, professional way.

It’s impossible to anticipate in advance what specific situational interview questions will be asked, which makes it hard to prepare your answers. However, it’s fairly safe to expect the interviewer to investigate the following broad areas:

• organizational skills/time management skills
• leadership skills
• communication skills
• interpersonal skills/conflict resolution

In addition to the above examples, an interviewer may formulate more technical or focused situational questions pertaining specifically to your field or area of expertise.

Here are some common situational interview questions that you may encounter:

You have a deadline approaching and fear you will be unable to meet it. What do you do?

Describe a situation where you were in disagreement with a coworker and explain how you handled it.

A coworker frequently leaves early when the boss is not around, and asks you to cover for him. What would you do?

Please describe a project that you led from start to finish and describe your strategy for seeing it through.

Many job seekers consider situational questions to be the most difficult. However, a situational question is a great opportunity for you to shine. If you give strong, confident answers, that might tell the interview everything he needs to know.

One good reason to use a staffing agency is that their knowledge of technology can help you find the best candidates for your company quickly and efficiently. Whether you hire the company to do it themselves, or whether they assist you with your search, their knowledge of technology in the candidate sourcing field will be invaluable.

How can a good staffing agency help your harness the power of technology?

Fine-Tune Your Job Description: Your staffing agency representative can sit down with you and help you narrow down exactly what set of skills and experience you believe the open position needs. The descriptors you pick—like work history, titles, education, skills and talents— will form the basis for an effective on-line search.

Make Use of Social Networking: Your rep can help you mine LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for likely candidates. They can also help you create and fill your company’s LinkedIn page, Twitter account and Facebook profile with information that will attract talent browsing the web for opportunities.

Discover the Needle in Your Haystack: If your HR department is inundated with candidates responding to just about any open position, a staffing agency has the time to sort out who truly is qualified;  run background, education, work history and credit searches;  handle preliminary interviews; conduct any testing required, and present you only with a short list of truly good candidates for the position.

Network: Staffing agencies will have an ATS or internal resume database that probably has more local and more qualified candidates than the Internet. Also, their search interfaces enable precise searching. And everyone in that database becomes a stepping stone to their friends, colleagues and family members who might have the skills you need.

Advertise in the Right Places: Giant job boards, like Monster.com, have become huge because people searching for a job actually use them. A smart staffing agency can help you get your share of qualified applicants from such boards, but they can also identify  niche and industry-specific boards, helping you reach a narrower and more focused pool of potential applicants.

Searching databases, the Internet, and social media offers the most reliable method of candidate sourcing, and having a staffing agency that can help you integrate this technology into your candidate sourcing routine can dramatically increase your ability to find the right people.

You’re in the middle of an interview for an amazing new job opportunity in Charlottesville. Everything is going great. You look polished; you sound confident; you’re nailing every question. Then the interviewer asks you:
“If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?”

Your heart starts racing. Your mind goes blank. You begin to sweat. What should you say?
First of all, there’s no need to panic. This kind of interview question is designed to stump you. The interviewer wants to see how you react and how quickly you can think on your feet.

Here’s what to do and what NOT to do in this kind of situation:
• Don’t let the question rattle you. Simply smile and take a deep breath.
• Ask for a moment to give it some thought. A moment of silence or a pause in the conversation is better than blurting out a ridiculous answer.
• If you don’t know what the interviewer is fishing for in your answer, then ask for clarification or for an example. Many times by discussing the question in this way, an answer will come to you.
• If you still can’t think of a good answer, simply ask the interviewer to come back to that question.
• Also, don’t worry about being brilliant or witty. Just be yourself and give an honest response. There is rarely a wrong answer to these kinds of questions.

Here are some examples of other unexpected job interview questions that may come your way:
• If you could have dinner with anyone from history, living or dead, who would it be and why?
• Who do you admire the most and why?
• If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?
Also, while you can’t prepare for every off-the-wall question, make sure you ARE prepared for the basic questions, such as:

• Tell me about yourself?
• Where do you see yourself in one year? Five years?
• Tell me about a time when you successfully handled a complicated situation?
• What are your strengths? Weaknesses?
• What do you consider your biggest career achievement?
• Why should we hire you?
• Why do you want this job?

As Southern Alabama’s leading staffing agency, Clark Personnel knows what employers are looking for during jobs interviews. If you’re searching for work and need helping preparing for an interview, please contact us today. We can help.

Having the right tools at your disposal can make hiring a lot easier—and a lot more successful.  Here is a quick overview of different assessments tools you can use, beyond the basic job interview:

Qualifications Screens – simple questionnaires determine if an applicant has the minimum requirements to perform a job (availability, minimum age, years of related experience, etc.).

Job Simulations / Work-Sample Tests – These require the candidate to actually demonstrate or perform job tasks. Simulations may be conducted: as written tests, as role-playing exercises, on a computer, or even in real-life conditions. By design, they generally show a high degree of job-relatedness.

General Abilities Tests – Generally used for entry-level jobs or for applicants without advanced degrees. They measure broad mental abilities such as reasoning, quantitative, verbal, and spatial abilities.

Specific Ability Tests – Test for distinct mental and physical abilities, such as typing speed, reading comprehension, strength, and mechanical aptitude.

Knowledge and Skills Tests – Determine how much an individual knows about a very specific, advanced subject area such as software programming or mortgage laws. Knowledge tests are similar to specific ability assessments, but examine more sophisticated skills.
Talent Measures / Personality Inventories – Measure a candidate’s natural personal characteristics like: leadership and management skills; problem-solving ability; motivation; self-confidence; and communication styles.

Culture Fit Inventories -  Assess how well an applicant will fit into your corporate culture and work environment, to help ensure organizational commitment.
Background Investigations – Gather information from outside sources, such as former employers and police records. Employment, criminal record, and reference checks all help employers avoid potentially catastrophic hires.

Drug Screens – Use a physical specimen from the candidate (hair, urine, etc.) to determine past drug or alcohol use. Employers use drug screens to prevent industrial accidents, work-related injuries, and excessive absenteeism.

If you would like more information about any of the above assessments please contact our offices today.