Job Interview Prep: Mastering Behavioural Questions & Answers

This assignment provides example answers to a series of common behavioral interview questions. The questions cover a range of scenarios designed to assess the candidate's skills, experience, and approach to problem-solving, conflict resolution, teamwork, and decision-making. Example answers include situations where the candidate used persuasion, coped with stress, applied good judgment, achieved goals, influenced opinions through presentations, conformed to policies, completed important documents, went above and beyond the call of duty, prioritized tasks, made split-second decisions, managed conflicts, worked with difficult colleagues, made tough decisions, showed initiative, handled upset customers, motivated others, delegated projects, used fact-finding skills, anticipated problems, and dealt with unpopular decisions. The answers provide insight into the candidate's ability to reflect on past experiences and articulate their skills and behaviors in a professional context. The assignment also touches on personal attributes such as self-starting ability, adaptability to workplace changes, and preferences for working with different types of people. The document concludes with examples of handling criticism, anger, conflict of interest, and disagreements with superiors.

1. Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successions
Convince someone to see things your way.
My project manager is not very flexible to extend the schedule of the construction work on move
this year. I made him convinced of the realities and inevitable delays in procurements and
managed him to provide allowance to extend the project duration.
2. Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping
skills.
There are several occasions particularly time schedule and quality expectations not meeting the
requirements of the project. I used to remain calm and exhibit all the necessary dexterity and
rationality in coping with that situation.
3. Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in
Solving a problem.
Whenever the project has schedule variance and cost variances, I used to employ my
judgement to find the factors responsible for that and do all the necessary precautions to keep
things on track.
4. Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or
achieve it.
Last year I set a goal to constrain the project budget by employing the lean management
principles. I successfully managed to reduce the budget by about 10% or more.
5. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence
someone's opinion.
My project manager is convinced by employing proper presentation skills, I managed to make
him believe that it is necessary to extend the project deadlines when there is possible delay in
getting the required classified building materials. He accepted my predictions and provided
allowance for completing the project.
6. Give me a specific example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with
which you did not agree.
The leave policy of the company is not agreeable to me as is against the government directives
and prevailing labour laws. But still I conformed to that as per the pressure from the managers
and made my subordinates also follow that. However later the policy is reviewed and
corrections are done in that.
7. Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete.
A proposal of the project budget is all that is done in the last month, for a very critical project
and it is very much important and did completion of the same to the best possible quality
standards.
8. Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order

to get a job done.
There was problem of workers absenteeism due to several local regions. I went to their homes,
persuaded them and made them take up the tasks. It is beyond the call of duty and I did it to
keep the project move on order.
9. Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to
Prioritize your tasks.
At the end of the project scheduled time, It is noticed that there is variance in the time schedule.
At that moment, I did prioritizing the tasks based on their relation with the critical path. All those
tasks on the critical path are prioritized and now the project is moving on track successfully.
10. Give me an example of a time when you had to make a split second decision.
When the quality of the workoutput is absolutely bad from one of the subcontractors., I made an
immediate second decision to suspend the work from him at the site, as it is very critical to the
complete the project.
11. What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example.
I employ negotiation, persuasion and adaptation techniques to deal with conflicts normally.
When a recent conflict arised with one of my colleague on the specifications of a construction, I
used factual presentation skills to provide him with the standards from the international
standards and allowed him to get convinced of my work presentation (Wallensteen,2018).
12. Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even
when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).
I did not like one of my colleague as he has no commitment to the work, but as we both shared
the same team and further he is financial representive for the project, I showed my best skills to
let him work on the project.
13. Tell me about a difficult decision you've made in the last year.
Sacking one of my best performing team subordinate due to disciplinary action of discrimination
at work is one of the difficult decisions taken by me last year.
14. Give me an example of a time when you tried to accomplish something and failed.
I tried my best to achieve the best worker of the division status for last three years, but I failed
my narrow margin of credentials.
15. Give me an example of a time when you showed initiative and took the lead.
In one of my previous projects, I had an occasion to take up a project due to sudden left over of
my immediate boss. Though I am not part of the project planning team, I took initiative to take
up the responsibilities and completed the work as per the specifications.
16. Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer
or co-worker.

One of my customers in the previous project is very upset with the material employed for
windows. He is not happy with the color of the glasses and also is not satisfied with the
properties of the same. It took lot of efforts by me to convince him, as it was beyond the
practical possibility to change that at that time.
17. Give me an example of a time when you motivated others (Herzberg, 2017).
My team members were motivated to stay on track, several times of problems like when they
did not get their salaries in time, when they did not get their performance reviews properly and
so and so forth.
18. Tell me about a time when you delegated a project effectively.
A project is effectively delegated by me to my team members recently. I made proper planning
and work division principles to make it achieve the objectives. Further risk management is also
included in the main stream project.
19. Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a
Problem.
When a customer complained that the plan and elevation of the house project is not as per the
agreed terms and conditions, I employed fact finding skills to retrieve and check the actual
specifications handed over to the customer, the actual drawings given to the project team and
finally concluded that there is no error in the construction and it is all as per the agreement only.
Customer finally got convinced.
20. Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem.
I missed solution to a problem, as the problem is not carefully analyzed. It is the case of
presenting the need for environmental supervisor in the site. I could not represent that in the
previous meeting with the team management. Due to which still we are facing complications at
site in terms of environmental mismanagement.
21. Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive
measures.
Possible cost variance in the construction project being overseen by me is an anticipated
problem and I took several preventive measures to keep the project on track by employing right
resources at the work site. Changed the vendors and high cost workers as well.
22. Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision.
There was a time; a construction project was suspended due to lack of resources. Expected
budgeting is not availed due to some reasons beyond my hand. Due to the same reason, the
project is suspended and several employees were sacked.
23. Please tell me about a time you had to fire a friend.

A friend and a good colleague of mine is sacked due to discrimination and work bullying
complaint on a female worker. He is fired inspite of being a long time friend of mine.
24. Describe a time when you set your sights too high (or too low).
I expected my previous project will easily qualify the required quality standards, however it did
not happen. It is not approved due to the lack of the quality of the material employed for beams.
25. Give me an example of a time when you have been out of your depth.
When I was suddenly deployed on a small time offshore project by my parent company. I was
really out of my depth, as my knowledge and experience in that domain is very limited.
26. Are you a self-starter? Give me examples to demonstrate this.
I am definitely a self-starter. I take up my PMP certification work by myself. I took up my lessons
and practice of team work, negotiation and conflict resolutions with my own initiatives. Also
successfully getting benefits from them.
27. What changes in the workplace have caused you difficulty and why?
Change over of the organizational CEO and the changes in the work policies created difficulties
for me.
28. What kinds of people do you like working with?
Like minded proactive and professional minded people I like to work with.
29. What kinds of people do you find it difficult to work with?
Lazy, irresponsible, unprofessional and people without ethics.
30. Give an example of when you have worked well under pressure.
Completing the last minute patch work to keep a project schedule on track.
31. Give me an example of when your work was criticized.
The quality of my engineering drawings presented over a recent structural work was criticized
as it followed principles which were not used to be in this company.
32. Give me an example of when you have felt anger at work. How did you cope and
did you still perform well?
When worker’s performance is not good and I felt anger several times.
33. Give me an example of when you have had to face a conflict of interest at work.
Team members not attached to the work and did not sense the pressure to complete in time.
34. Tell me about the last time you disagreed with your boss.
Over the time schedule and due time setting without considering the delays in procurements.

35. Do you prefer to work alone or in a group? Why?
In a group, since my nature of work involve group work(Talman,2018).

References
Herzberg, F. (2017). Motivation to work. Routledge.
Talman, J. (2018, August). Enhancing Teamwork in Group Projects by Applying Principles of
Project Management. In Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings (Vol. 10,
pp. 3-35).
Wallensteen, P. (2018). Understanding conflict resolution. SAGE Publications Limited.