HR Interview

Questions
 Personal Interview
Preparation

Some General Tips

❖ Make sure your introduction/answers seem spontaneous rather than memorized.

❖ Try tailoring it to the company’s values or the attributes that they seek in a candidate.
❖ Have about 5-10 instances in your life which you can adapt for most questions
❖ Practice speaking out your answers to yourself (or ideally someone else). Things always
seem different in your head
❖ Even if you are asked a generic HR question about yourself and your skills, provide a
relevant example for it. It becomes much more believable, and the company will stop
probing if you volunteer answers
❖ It is ESSENTIAL that you are clear about why you want to be in a
company/industry/profile. Try and individualize these and draw upon your experience as
well as on the research you’ve done on the company

Lastly, stay calm and enthusiastic. Do not appear stressed if they throw you a question you have
not thought about. You’ve got this

I. Background

1. Tell me about yourself.

2. Take me through your CV
3. Tell me something not on your resume?
4. Where did you grow up?
5. What are your three major accomplishments?
6. What was an experience in your life that you would want to go back and change?
7. How would your friends describe you in 3 words?

II. Goals/Career prospects

8. What new goals have you established for yourself recently? Have your goals changed since
IIML?
9. What are your five to ten year career goals?
10. Why marketing or why finance or why consulting or why operations?
11. What are the attributes of an ideal job for you?
12. What are the alternative positions/jobs you are considering?
13. What salary are you expecting? In addition to salary, what benefits would most interest you?
III. Previous Bosses/Companies

14. How did you find your summer jobs?

15. How do you think a former supervisor would describe your work?
16. Two situations when you stood up to your superiors: One where you failed, and one where
you succeeded
17. What did you enjoy most about your last employment? Least?
(Tread carefully here, do not be overly negative about your previous company/boss)
18. Describe the job or the activity which has had the greatest impact on your career goals.

IV. Job / Company / Industry

19. Why company/industry/profile?

20. What do you think this job requires?
21. Given that you have no background in this field why are you interested in it?
22. You have five minutes to describe the most relevant and specific items in your background
which show you are uniquely qualified for this position.
23. What concerns you about our company?
24. What do you believe are the key issues and problems in our industry today?
25. What do you predict is going to happen in this industry in the next 5 years?
26. How would you go about evaluating a business?
27. What do you know about our company and competitors?

V. Leadership and Teamwork styles/situations

28. What is your management philosophy?

29. Define leadership.
30. What qualities should a successful manager possess? Do you have these attributes?
31. Situation when you successfully resolved a conflict.
32. Situation when you faced an ethical dilemma
33. Give me an example of a leadership role you have held when not everything went as
planned.
34. Situation in which you provided a solution to an employer.
35. Situation in which you worked under deadline pressure.
36. Give me an example of how you manage multiple projects.
37. Situation where you led a team to achieve something significant
38. Biggest Failure of your life/ Part of a team and failed
39. Name a point in your life where you turned a negative into a positive.
40. Decision you have made that you later regretted.
41. A situation when you changed your mindset by listening to others? OR Describe a situation
when you changed your decision after being influenced by someone?
42. A situation where you had to persuade others to achieve a goal, overcoming resistance.
How did you go about doing it? What did you learn from it?
43. Describe a situation where you initiated a new idea or approach and implemented it. How
did you go about it?/ Non-Traditional approach
44. A situation where you displayed creativity
45. A situation where you showed initiative
46. A situation where you were short of time/resources. How did you approach it?
47. A situation where you dealt with ambiguity. How did you deal with it?
48. How do you feel about working overtime?
49. What would you say to a boss that has a sub-par idea?

VI. Strengths/Weaknesses & skills

50. What are your strongest abilities?

51. What is your biggest weakness? Never say that being a perfectionist is your biggest
weakness. Some applicants think that this makes you look better, but it seems that you not
secure.
52. Why should we hire you? What makes you stand out among your fellow students?
53. How do you feel about working in a structured environment?
54. Are you able to work on several assignments at once?
55. In what kind of work environment do you do your best work?
56. What type of work/people prevent you from doing your best?
57. How competitive are you?
58. How do you work under pressure? 59. What has been your greatest challenge?

VII. Education

60. Why did you decide to get an MBA?

61. Why IIML?
62. What has been your impression so far about MBA and IIM?
63. What made you decide to major in ?
64. What have you learned at IIML that will help you on this job?
65. What electives have you taken? Which did you enjoy the most and least?
66. How do you balance the different priorities MBA student life presents?
67. Did your grades accurately reflect your ability? Why/Why not?

VI. Extra-Curriculars

68. What have you learned from your activities? How will these learnings help in your job?
69. Were your extracurricular activities worth the time you put into them?
70. How did you become involved in your extracurricular activities?
71. What do you enjoy doing outside of work-in your free time?
72. What is your favorite book/movie/song/painting-or author/actor/singer/artist?
73. Which magazines/newspapers do you read regularly? Which books have you read recently?
74. Have you ever done volunteer activities?