Job interview questions and answers

Find examples of job interview questions and answers specific to the job you are applying for. This page highlights the issues surrounding job interview questions and answers that crop up in interviews for jobs in retail companies like Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's or Marks & Spencer.

Many job interview questions and answers can be found on the internet, and some are specific to certain industries or functions. So when searching, or looking for links, watch out for specific terms based on the job type or company name, for instance, "administrative job interview questions" or "Tesco job interview questions".

How to answer job questions during an interview

Remember that you will probably be interviewed by your potential supervisor, and he or she is the most important interviewer to concentrate on. Have you ever been thrown by tricky potential supervisor job interview questions in the past? Answers are provided to several such questions in this article, or in the links from this article.

Job interview questions and answers are arranged under appropriate headings so you can focus on your main area of concern. This article should be equally useful to both interviewers and interviewees. The latter should note that as they found this page so easily on the internet, so will interviewers!

Don't just skim the answers and techniques, master them and learn them off by heart. Practice questions for first job interview are given, as well as more advanced questions. Questions to ask at an job interview are just as important to consider as questions you are asked. So don't forget to think of questions to ask employer at job interview.

Job interview questions for interviewers

When you have a large number of applicants you should consider a first round of interviews centred on multiple choice questions. These can be marked by computer; totals and averages can be automatically produced, and charts can be made. Graphing behavioural job interview questions is just as easy as producing bar charts for IQ scores.

Think of ways you can test applicants across the whole range of aptitudes using paper or computer testing. When it comes to face to face encounters, the human resources manager should encourage supervisor job interview questions. Responses to technical questions might only be understood by a supervisor who is an expert in the area. For instance, for computer job interview questions the IT manager must be involved.

But the interviewer must not let the technical supervisor take control of the interview. The interviewees technical knowledge is important, but it is not the only quality that should be sought. Performance based job interview questions and answers must be exhaustively considered by the interviewer.

Job interview questions for employers can be found on the internet, but remember that the interviewee is likely to have encountered the more obvious sites. So look for likely questions in books, magazines and through discussions with colleagues.

Human resources and interview questions

Human resources need to be involved in any interview situation. Their questions can complement more technical questioning. More importantly, they can ensure that inappropriate questions are not asked by inexperienced interviewers. Entry level job interview questions, especially, need careful vetting by human resource departments.

In one interview I was involved with, the main interviewer let a technical expert begin the interview by asking an entry level IT operator to write a complicated computer program right there in the interview. The poor applicant just froze and could make no headway at all.

Thinking they had failed the interview, they put up a very bad performance thereafter and were looking to leave the interview as soon as possible. In fact, the job was a customer facing IT support role and involved no programming! On paper, the applicant looked perfect for the job.

Afterward, I remonstrated with the IT manager and suggested a re-interview at a later date. But the applicant (unsurprisingly!) found a job elsewhere. The moral is that the experienced interviewers should keep their technical co-interviewers on a tight rein!

Questions to ask during job interview should begin with ones the interviewee is likely to find easy to answer. This will help them get over any nerves, and produce better answers for the interviewer to work with. You must also consider job interview questions from the employer's perspective. Illegal questions to ask in a job interview mainly involve sexual or racial matters, and these subjects should be avoided as far as possible.

Preparing for unusual questions and interviews

What if you have interview questions for a quality assurance job? Or a job as a technical writer? Or some other "different" kind of job? A mega-corporation like Tesco has almost as many different kinds of jobs as a country. What happens if you apply for a job in Tesco sales and the interviewer says, for example, "I don't think you will be suitable for our sales division, but we are looking for a technical writer and you have an English degree. What would you think about applying for this position?"

The answer to preparing for these kinds of questions is "know yourself". You can take job aptitude tests, of the kind companies like Tesco are likely to give you, before applying for a job. If you find you have an aptitude for jobs you have not considered before be prepared for job offers in those areas!

Samples of job interview questions

It is not that useful to seek out the most asked job interview questions in generic form, because the difficult and most frequently asked questions in job interview are industry specific