Personal interview questions and answers

What was your biggest mistake?

There’s nothing wrong in admitting a mistake. A human being is bound to commit mistakes. This time it is advantageous to go back as far as possible in the past and find an answer.

The advantage of doing this is that a youngster is expected to commit more mistakes than a mature and seasoned person. This would give an impression that since that time you have committed mistakes but not that big.

Take the word “mistake” as liberally as possible and go back to your student life to answer this question. Probably you can say, if I could go back to my student life, I would have studied Biology instead of Math.

Why haven’t you got a job yet?

This question will usually arise if it has been sometime since you finished your studies and are still in the market without a job.

You can say that, I have been offered some tempting positions in the last few days but had to turn them down as I did not find them right for my candidature. You can follow it up with some examples.

You do not have all the experience we are seeking for this position.

To answer this question, you again need to analyze the requirements of the role properly and match them to your candidature.

If you meet most of the requirements, you can say that you have most of the qualities needed for this role and for the remaining you are always open to learning them.

You can follow this up with an example from your last job where you learnt and did things that you didn’t know earlier. Stay confident while answering this question.

Why do you want to quit your present job?

The reasons for you to quit the present job could be numerous, may be you don't get well along with your boss or your salary is too less but its not good to make derogatory remarks about your present company in an interview.

You can give a more practical answer like, my present company is not able to offer me further growth opportunities and I have a feeling that its the time for me to grow up in hierarchy and learn further..

Have you ever made a mistake at work? How did you rectify it?

Everybody makes mistakes, there's nothing wrong in admitting it. In the interview you can say that yes , there have been times when you have made mistakes and learnt from them.

Whatever you could correct yourself, you did that and for the rest you went back to your senior and took his help to sort it out.

What major problems did you face in your last role?

The agenda of this question is to understand if

• You caused the problem

• Could it have been avoided?

• Your attitude to solve it.

It is safer to mention a problem which was caused by an external party rather than the problems within internal parties.

May be you can take an example of the problem caused by a customer, vendor. Discuss what you did to solve the problem. If you took some leadership role also in the whole process, talk about it.