What is your greatest strength?
This might seem like a no-brainer question to answer, but be careful. Dont use this as an opportunity to soapbox about how wonderful you are; pick a specific ability or skill that relates to the job youre applying for and talk about it. This is one of the easiest times during an interview to sell yourself, so hit the sweet spot of playing up your strengths without boasting. Describe what your greatest skill is, and then pick two or three examples that depict it in action.
Describe a difficult work situation or project and how you overcame it.
Similar to answering “how do you handle stress and pressure,” this is an opportunity to talk about your problem solving abilities. This question is best answered with a focus on a single example since thats what the question is asking for. Start by setting up the situation, then talk about how you solved it. Cap off your answer with a short and sweet explanation of your thought process, goals, and problem-solving method.
How do you evaluate success?
Your answer to this question will tell employers whether or not you fit the office culture and if you would be a motivated employee. Its a broad, nebulous question, but dont let that scare you. Pick a few measures of success that relate to the job youre applying for; success can mean fostering good communication, completing projects ahead of schedule, or finding innovative solutions to certain problems.
How do you handle stress and pressure?
Stress and pressure are ubiquitous in the working world. No matter how easy-going your workplace might be, there are always problems, snags, and emergencies that interrupt plans. They key to answering this question is acknowledging how you overcome personal feelings and solve problems. Whether your first response is to take 60 seconds to breathe and clear your head or write down solutions on a scrap of paper, emphasize your ability to focus on solutions, self-motivate through adversity, and sidestep panic.
Why are you leaving or have left your job?
If you left on unfriendly terms with your previous employer, your gut reaction might to be to pick apart every single thing that was wrong with them. Do not, at any time for any reason, do this. Unless you were laid off, focus on your inspired need to find new opportunities. You might want to focus on a different kind of work, or perhaps there wasnt any room to grow at your old company. Whatever the reason, the best answers to this question will focus on personal and professional growth.
Enter cognitive interviewing: a non-traditional, non-confrontational specialized interview approach designed to enhance the quantity and quality of information recalled by victims, witnesses, subjects and sources.
“I make sure the role players from FLETC are not primed beforehand so they don’t know what they’re getting into, so the follow-on interview is realistic when they rely on their memory,” she said. “For the scenarios themselves (I) make sure they have all the props they need, like beverages and food. A lot of props are involved. Plus we have to coordinate well in advance with FLETC to get the building locations needed. That’s a challenge because we have more than 90 agencies training here.”
“You can often tell when interviewees are actively remembering because their bodies become engaged,” Dr. Ray said. “It’s amazing the vivid details interviewees can remember during context reinstatements, all without asking them a single question!”
The role players are contracted through a corporation headquartered in Dallas, Texas, specializing in base operation and support services requirements for federal facilities. Their customers include the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and others in six states and the District of Columbia.
That’s where cognitive interviewing comes in. By using a funnel approach to get information, the cognitive interview avoids asking specific questions until late in the interview. It begins with obtaining a free narrative, then narrowing the focus onto certain portions of the narrative, and finally focusing on specific details and questions. The interviewer starts not by asking questions, but by providing broad instructions. For example: “Please tell me everything you can remember before, during and after the robbery, with as much detail as possible…including everything you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, as well as everything you feel and think.”