PERSONAL QUALITIES

PERSONAL QUALITIES

Analytical Skills

1. Are you analytical? Give us one example of your analytical abilities.
2. Tell us about a particulary difficult problem that you analyzed and what was your recommendation.

Career

1. Where do you want to be 5 years from now in your career?
2. Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?

Confidence

1. How confident are you that you can successfully perform the duties of this position and why?
2. Tell us about a situation that would demonstrate the level of confidence that you have in yourself.
3. Tell us about a situation that would demonstrate the level of confidence your manager has in you.
4. Tell us about a situation that would show the confidence your coworkers have in you.

Creativity

1. Are you creative? Give us one example of your creativity.
2. Describe a situation where you came up with a creative solution to a problem.

Decision-Making

1. What type of decisions do you make in your current position?
2. What decisions are easiest for you to make and which ones are the most difficult? Why?
3. What steps are involved in making a decision?
4. What items of information do you typically need before you make a decision?
   Remember, there are no perfect decisions.

Independent/Self-Starter

1. Provide us with an example of your ability to work independently.
   Give an example.  The example may relate what you did in an emergency situation.   If this is an entry level position, use an example from school or sports or other activities.

Interpersonal

1. What do you think your supervisor would say about your work?
2. What do you think your coworker would say about your work?
3. What would your boss say about you - both positive and negative?
4. What would your subordinates say about - both positive and negative?
5. What would your co-workers say about you - both positive and negative?
6. What three keywords would your peers use to describe you?
7. What one thing would your boss say that he or she has the greatest problem with you?
8. Describe a situation in which your work was criticized?
   Describe the situation and how you responded to the criticism.
9. How would your subordinates describe you?
10. Tell us about the last time you lost your temper?
11. What situations make you lose your temper?
12. Tell us about the worst supervisor you've worked under.
13. Tell us about the best supervisor you've worked under.
14. Tell us about a confrontation that you've had with a coworker.
15. How do you maintain an effective working relationship with your coworkers?
16. How would your best friend describe you?
17. How would your worst enemy describe you?

Judgement

1. In instances where you are required to assert yourself, what do you do to assert yourself effectively?
2. Tell us about your morals and integrity.
3. Describe for us your ethics.
4. Relate to us a confrontation that you've had with your supervisor.  Who was wrong and why?
5. Relate to us the last time you dealt with an ethical question on the job and how did you handle the situation.
6. What did you do the last time you were asked to submit a report that due to time and resource constraints, compromise quality?
7. Tell us about a situation that would exemplify your integrity.
8. Describe a politically sensitive situation that you were in and how you handled the situation.
9. Tell us about a situation where you made a mistake. How did you handle the mistake and what was the resolution?
10. Under what circumstances should you bypass your supervisor and go to your supervisor's supervisor?
11. Give us a situation that illustrates your ability to exercise good judgement.

Pressure

1. What experience have you had in pressure situations?
2. Tell us about a pressure situation you were in that would demonstrate your ability to work under pressure.
3. Provide us with an example of how you've asserted yourself in an emergency or high-pressure situation?
4. What does it take to get under your skin?
5. What are some constructive methods of dealing with stress?
6. Why are manhole covers round?
   A test of your ability to think under pressure.  Would a round manhole cover or a square manhole cover fall through the hole?

Responsibility

1. Briefly describe the most significant responsibility you have had in your career and what it taught you?
2. How do you handle responsibility?

Risk

1. How do you deal with risk on the job?
2. Name the greatest risk that you've taken?
3. Name the greatest risk that you've taken which resulted in failure.

Strengths

1. Why should we hire you?
2. What are your three greatest strengths?
3. What can you contribute to our organization?
4. Assume that you are a candidate in the coming general election.  Tell me why you are the best candidate in the field.
5. What is your greatest strength?
6. We've interviewed a number of highly qualified students for this position.  What sets you apart from the others?
7. What are your strengths?
8. What part of your current job are you the most comfortable with?
9. What are your strong points and how have they helped you to succeed?

Weaknesses

1. What is your greatest weakness?
2. Name your three greatest weaknesses.
3. Which is the worst of your three greatest weaknesses and why?
4. What are your weaknesses?
5. What part of your current job are you the least comfortable with?
6. What are your weak points and how have you overcome them?
7. What about yourself would you want to improve
8. In which area do you need to make the improvement in?

You

1. Tell us about the passion in your life as it relates to your work.
2. What are your most outstanding qualities?
3. If you were to start your own company, what would that company do?
4. Tell me about the last book that you read.
5. If you were a cucumber in a salad and some body was about to eat you, what would you do?
6. What are your worst qualities?
7. What is your favorite color and what does it reflect in your personality?
8. Rate yourself from one to ten on your work ethic with ten being best .
9. Describe yourself.

ACCOUNTING

Entry Level

1. What experience have you had as a cashier?

Accounts Payable

1. How many invoices have you handled on a monthly basis?
2. What steps would you take before approving an invoice for payment?
3. What items of information do you need before you can approve an invoice for payment?
4. Tell us about your experience in accounts payable.
5. Tell us about an invoice discrepancy that you discovered and how you resolved the discrepancy.
6. Tell us about an invoice dispute that you were involved in and what your role was in resolving the dispute.
7. Tell us about your experience in accounts payable.

Accounts Receivable

1. To what extent were you involved in collections?
2. You've been asked to prepare a bill for services. What information should be included in the bill?

Audit

1. Tell us about your experience in conducting audits.

Cost Accounting

1. Tell us about your experience in cost Accounting.
2. Describe some of the methods used to allocate support costs.
3. What are fixed costs?
4. What are variable costs?
5. What is marginal cost?

Fixed Assets

1. What experience have you had in fixed assets Accounting?

General Ledger

1. What experience do you have with general ledger?

Payroll

1. Based on Internal Revenue Service rules, what criteria distinguish a consultant from an employee?
2. What experience have you had in payroll?

Supervisory

1. How might quality problems manifest themselves in an accounting department?
2. What cost-cutting measures have you implemented?
3. Which accounting systems are you familiar with?
4. Identify some important steps to take during the conversion of an accounting system.
5. What percentage of discounts lost did you have in Accounts Payable?  Did the percentage increase or decrease under your supervision?

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND BENCHMARKING

1. What is benchmarking?
2. What experience have you had in benchmarking?
3. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of benchmarking a government agency to the public sector and benchmarking to the private sector.
4. What are the keys for implementing a performance measurement program?
5. What are some of the means by which performance can be measured?
6. What requirements should be met in order to measure performance?
7. What does "best practices" mean?
8. How would you communicate the implementation of performance measurements so as to not panic staff?

BUDGET/COST CONTROL

Budget

1. What is a budget?
2. Provide us with an example of how "zero-based budgeting" would apply to the staffing in your organization.
3. What is the difference between a capital budget and an expense budget?
4. Name some typical operating expenses.
5. Why is it that the direct salary paid to an employee does not represent the total cost of the employee to the organization?
6. What experience have you had in developing a budget?
7. What is the purpose of a budget?
8. What are the steps involved in preparing a budget?
9. What is zero-based budgeting?
10. Have you conducted a budget review?
11. Define the internal rate of return.
12. How may the internal rate of return be used in capital budgeting?
13. What are the benefits of budgeting?
14. How would you prepare a cost/benefit analysis for an automation system?

Cost Control

1. What are some of cost-cutting steps you could take to reduce fleet expenses?
2. Your expenditures for office supplies have increased by 50% over the past two years. What steps will you take to determine the reason for the increase?
3. What is the relationship between a cost accounting system and a budget?
4. What benefits does a cost accounting system provide?
5. You have been asked to recommend some criteria for reducing the budget. What criteria will you recommend for reducing the budget?
6. You have been asked to reduce the information technology budget. How will you do this?
7. You have been asked to reduce the training budget. How would you determine the reductions?
8. Your expenditures for office supplies have increased by 50% over the past two years. What steps will you take to control and reduce expenditures?
9. Overtime expenditures have increased over the past year. Yet, the workload has not increased. What steps will you take to control overtime?
10. You have been asked to reduce the staff for your organization by 10%. How will you go about this?
11. Cost reduction is often associated with budget reductions. What are some positive means of reducing costs?
12. What are the factors involved in a cost/benefit analysis?
13. What are the potential pitfalls when the variances of budget versus actual expenditures are expressed only as percentages?

About Author:

I am Thomas Britto here to share my experiences in the civil engineering field to all my readers.Today many students are struggling to buy books at high prices. So I decided to start a blog and share my experience and knowledge with all my readers.

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