3 Questions during an interview:
- What is a typical day like? In terms of how early the day starts, what goes on during the day, and when the day ends. Does the day end when you leave the office or are there chances of bringing work home? In terms of projects or assignments are they relatively consistent or does it change everyother day or week?
- What are the conditions for days off or taking time off? What I mean is; do employees get to have set amount of days off a week or are we working every day for a set number of hours? In terms of taking time off is there a maximum amount of time we are allowed to take off before having reprocussions. I guess that falls more into sick days and whether they add up or do they go away every year or month. Do we get paid for sick days?
- If there was something about the job that you would change what would it be? Why? If it is something rather significant who could be the one to get the change in order? Or if it is something small what can be done to actually get it changed? What is stopping this change from happening?
3 Big Moments:
- One of the most important stories to include during an interview would be a time that I faced a problem and explain how I over came it. I often return to when I was working at Dick’s Sporting Goods and a customer was rather tempered that I could not accept their coupons as they were expired. I used a calm voice to keep the situation low risk to ensure other customers were not disturbed by the interaction. However, the customer did not want it so, I called my manager over and he talked to the customer to figure out what we could do to fix his time at the store. Obviously the customer said about using the coupons and my manager allowed him to use one of the coupons to reduce the total. However, this was not enough, the customer wanted more off and decided that instead of buying the products I had scanned he was only going to buy one of them. He paid for the one item and left the store, leaving the other items on my counter.
- Another story would be when I was working at my internship (Kennebunkport Conservation Trust) I had to help out presenting a virtual field trip with my boss to a local 3-4 grade class. During many of these field trips I would be thrown into what we would be doing for the day, I would get a brief description about what we were doing and then actually get the information when we would be presenting. This enabled me to quickly learn and adapt to what we would be educating the children on for that field trip. Some of the field trips we would do consisted of what kind of soil results in the dirtiest water, What lobstermen capture on the coast of Maine, and what kinds of water there are on Earth with their percentages in downsized water examples.
- The last story I would tell involves scheduling and being organized when it comes to classes, intermural sports, clubs, and work. I would tell them about how important it is to schedule things in accordance of how long the event will take, how long it will take to get there, and then what is happening after the event. I would use the meeting as an example and how I had scheduled it to be an hour or so after work so that I had time to eat something, get ready for it, get to the meeting, and still had time to spare before the meeting actually started. I might even throw in when I was going to class and there was construction on the main road to the school so I had to wait my turn before going which set me back but because of planning I was still on time for class.
3 Questions from the Interview Committee:
- Honestly I think one of the most asked questions in interviews involves, what your weaknesses are. I think this is a question that may stump people when they are being interviewed but I have been told that you can give a weakness as long as you follow it up with a strength that makes up for the weakness.
- Another question that will be asked is; what would you bring to this team? How would the company benefit from you working here? I think this is an important question the employer needs to make sure that they are actually getting someone that will better the company in the long run. It would be benedicial in this part to include some of the qualities that they are looking for as to shine a light on you a little bit more.
- The interview Committee are likely to ask; what is your goal? What do you want to get out of this company? This usually involves the applicant’s intentions and the reason behind why they even want the job in the first place. When answering this question I think it is important to relate to some of things the company does or their mission. To show that you align with what they want to do as a company in the world.
Questions about Job-script:
- In major duties it mentions reaching out to higher-ups and other companies so they will see and hear about the product. But I thought I was just going to be sharing it with Universities, is this handbook also going to companies? Also, who are the higher-ups in this case, those in the company or the universities?
- There is really only mention of first year students within this job description. Will I only be working with First year students, or will this handbook be going to the rest of the students as well? Can only first year students bring information up that they think should be included or can other individuals from the universities have an input?
- For Key Competencies there is a simple lists of required and preferred abilities that you would want to have in the employee that is hired. Can you go in more depth about what each of these would look like, more specifically the adaptability, quick thinking, and calm under pressure?
