Useful Questions

Introduction

Now that you have a nice, storyline ready and available, along with long and short versions of all of your answers, what remains is mapping out of stories to some of the most common questions which you might face, either in a written HR form or in a HR/PI interview. There isn't too much structure left to this process. We'll have a look at some of the most common HR questions. You should try to provide answers to each of these questions and keep a version ready with you. Once again, a short and long version is usually useful to have. Most of these answers should stem directly from your story lining excel, with minor modifications. Some answers might require a little bit of fresh thinking.

Personality Overview Questions:

1. Give a candid description of yourself, describing who you are as an individual. Give examples where ever necessary.
2. Tell us something about yourself which is not there in your resume.
3. What do you think are your major strengths areas? How would these strengths help you in your professional life? Why do you think these strengths are important?
4. What do you think are your major improvement areas/ weaknesses? Why do you think these as improvement areas? How do you plan to overcome these weaknesses?
5. What are your long-term (5-10 years) and short-term (1-2 year) goals in life?
6. Describe an incident that has had a deep impact on you and brought about a significant change?
7. Successful leaders have a clear sense of purpose. What is your Statement of Purpose?
8. Who has inspired you in your life and why?
9. Describe top three decisions you have taken in your life till now. Why do they rank as top three?
10. Describe a little about your family and describe how they influenced in shaping who you are today?

Behavioural Questions:

1. Tell us about your single greatest achievement.
2. Describe a situation where you achieved something significant after overcoming obstacles.
3. At times, many of us are caught in a situation of moral conflict, where we have to choose between two seemingly right alternatives. Give us one situation when you faced this conflict. Describe your experience and how you went about resolving it?
4. Describe a situation when you had put in your maximum efforts but the results were far from satisfactory. What did you learn from this situation?
5. Provide an example when you approached your work with a mindset of having limited resources or time. Please include details of the context, the action you took and the results that were achieved.
6. Describe a situation where you initiated a new idea or approach and implemented it. How did you go about it?
7. If you had to be invested with one company for 10 years (as employee), which company would you choose and why?
8. Do you think that your academic results are a true reflection of your abilities? Why/why not?
9. Describe one decision which you took in the past, which given your present situation, you would take differently. Why?

The below guidelines might also help further provide some direction in terms of how you might want to approach answers to each of the above questions.