Preparing for the Interview — Behavioral Questions

During a job interview, you will more than likely be confronted with behavioral questions. These are questions where the interviewer is looking for examples of actions taken by an applicant – or behavior of an applicant — that demonstrated certain competencies or skills.
The interviewer is looking for detailed and tangible demonstration of certain qualities or skills.
The interviewer might ask for an example of how you motivated an employee who was not performing up to par or to talk about an instance of when you put in place a new program that made a significant contribution to your company. The interviewer wants to find out exactly what you did to achieve the results that you did.
The challenge you have going into the interview is preparing so that you can give good answers to such questions. Naturally, you aren’t going to be able to cover all the different possible behavioral questions that an interviewer might ask. But, what you can do to prepare, is examine the job description to find out what the requirements are for the job, what traits the company is looking for, and then think about how you demonstrated those traits in your previous jobs.
It would also be helpful, if you have the time, to talk to people in the same profession to get their input on what they think the skills, knowledge, and personal qualities are needed for someone to do well in the job.
Think about your work history and the skills that helped you succeed in those jobs. Make a short list of the skills you believe would make you a good fit for the job you are applying for, and then try to come up with examples of times that you used those qualities or skills.
When answering these types of questions during the interview, you should begin by describing the problem that you confronted, the situation you found yourself in that needed to be corrected.
Then talk about the actions you took to correct the situation. You should be as specific and concrete as possible in your description. Then relate what the results of your efforts were.
If you are looking for temporary, temporary-to-hire or direct-hire work in the Anchorage area, contact the Opti Staffing Group, one of the top employment agencies in the Anchorage area. We would love to discuss how we can help you find the job you are looking for.

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