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Difficut Interview Questions


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I have my interview coming up in the next couple of days at U of Manitoba and am so scared that they are going to ask me an obscure question that I don't have an answer for. I feel like I have prepared well, but have come across a couple questions that stumped me at first and took me quite some time to answer. What do you do if you don't have a personal example for a question? Can you spin it and say that you don't have a specific example, but if I was in this situation I would.... Or can you ask for another question?

 

Here are some examples:

 

Tell me a time where you had to fire a friend.

 

Tell me a time when you hired the wrong person for a position.

 

Tell me a time you had to use your presentation skills to persuade someone's opinion.

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What do you do if you don't have a personal example for a question? Can you spin it and say that you don't have a specific example, but if I was in this situation I would.... Or can you ask for another question?

 

Under the sxenario you have given, you would jump into the hypothetical and answer it that way.

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Here are some of the interview questions that i've had this year:

 

1. Your supervisor comes to you and says the he is going to be presenting your thesis work at an upcoming conference and he would like you to prepare the presentation. How do you proceed?

 

2. Describe a time in your life when you were asked to teach a subject matter to a group of people who had no background in the area. How did you deal with this? What problems did you encounter?

 

3. Your friend has just received some really bad news. how do you deal?

 

4. At some point in our lives, we've all become overwhelmed with the amount of work that we have had to do. Describe a time when this has happened to you and explain how you dealt with it.

 

5. Describe a time when you had to make a quick decision. What were the consequences?

 

6. Describe a time when you're actions negatively impacted your academics.

 

7. Describe a situation where your actions helped someone else, but produced no direct benefit to you.

 

8. You are helping a patient who is having xrays taken and you accidently swing the xray machine directly into their face. The patient is obviously in pain and there is definitely going to be a bruise. What do you do?

 

9. You just received your mark on a test you wrote a couple weeks ago, and you have failed. You go to your professor to get some advice from him and all he says is that next time you should study harder. He is very abrupt and tells you that he has no more time to speak with you. What do you do?

 

10. Describe a situation where your actions negatively impacted someone else.

 

11. Describe a time when you were asked to learn something that was completely outside of your comfort zone/realm of knowledge. How did you approach the situation? What were the outcomes?

 

12. Describe a time when a mistake you made had serious consequences on your academics. How did you deal with this?

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Hmmm at UT they did ask me specific behavioral Q's that genuinely didn't apply to me and I took a pass (twice). They weren't the kind that everybody should have the experience to draw from. I told them that's never happened to me and they asked me different Q's. I don't know if that affected me negatively though because I didn't get in.

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For the more specific behavioural ones, if you don't have an experience that fits with the question then try to answer it in a situational way, say "I can't think of an example right now but if i was in that situation, what I would do is..............."

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Here are some of the interview questions that i've had this year:

 

1. Your supervisor comes to you and says the he is going to be presenting your thesis work at an upcoming conference and he would like you to prepare the presentation. How do you proceed?

 

2. Describe a time in your life when you were asked to teach a subject matter to a group of people who had no background in the area. How did you deal with this? What problems did you encounter?

 

3. Your friend has just received some really bad news. how do you deal?

 

4. At some point in our lives, we've all become overwhelmed with the amount of work that we have had to do. Describe a time when this has happened to you and explain how you dealt with it.

 

5. Describe a time when you had to make a quick decision. What were the consequences?

 

6. Describe a time when you're actions negatively impacted your academics.

 

7. Describe a situation where your actions helped someone else, but produced no direct benefit to you.

 

8. You are helping a patient who is having xrays taken and you accidently swing the xray machine directly into their face. The patient is obviously in pain and there is definitely going to be a bruise. What do you do?

 

9. You just received your mark on a test you wrote a couple weeks ago, and you have failed. You go to your professor to get some advice from him and all he says is that next time you should study harder. He is very abrupt and tells you that he has no more time to speak with you. What do you do?

 

10. Describe a situation where your actions negatively impacted someone else.

 

11. Describe a time when you were asked to learn something that was completely outside of your comfort zone/realm of knowledge. How did you approach the situation? What were the outcomes?

 

12. Describe a time when a mistake you made had serious consequences on your academics. How did you deal with this?

 

 

I feel beter now. I can answer these. Thanks!

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For the more specific behavioural ones, if you don't have an experience that fits with the question then try to answer it in a situational way, say "I can't think of an example right now but if i was in that situation, what I would do is..............."

 

Yeah I tried to do that except that they cut me off and said they'll ask another question. Eeeeek no wonder I didn't feel good after that interview.

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Yeah I tried to do that except that they cut me off and said they'll ask another question. Eeeeek no wonder I didn't feel good after that interview.

 

That's werid, I don't think it would reflect badly on you though, maybe the interviewers were being nice and gave you another more relevant question?

 

They can't really expect us to come up with an example of something we never thought of under that kind of pressure...

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Behavioral questions ask about your past behaviour. They usually start with "Tell me a time when..."

 

Here are some examples:

 

Give me an example when you used logic to solve a problem.

 

Give me an example of a goal you reached and how you achieved it.

 

Describe a decision that you made that was unpopular and how you implemented it.

 

Have you gone above the call of duty? If so, how?

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I got into both UBC and U of T and I think I really aced my interview at UBC. From my experience (and this is the way I think, so it's just a matter of opinion).

 

With the questions you are asked, they are looking for people who has experienced a lot of things and are well rounded. If the scenario does not apply to you, DO NOT EVER PASS A QUESTION. At Dalhousie, they would not even let me, they kept pushing me to answer a question. PASSING A QUESTION MEANS 1. you lack some experiences that you should have. 2. even if you didn't you can't even think of what you would do. 3. you like to evade tough situations.

 

Now, tips on how to ace the interviews. Say they asked tell me a situation where you saw a friend cheat on an exam and what you did.

 

Now you might think: oops, I've never had that happen in my life. But here is how you answer it, ask yourself if you did what would you do?

 

You are allowed to take sometime, so ask the interviewers to give you a few minutes for you to think about the most relevant experience that you have had.

 

Be sure to involve names, dates, courses to make your story convincing. Instead of saying my friend. Say my friend, Bob Dylan, kept peeking at my a girl in our class back in U0 in first level physics midterm. I approached him later telling him, I saw what he tried to do and told him the consequences that might come out of it. He was a bit upset at first saying that it was none of his business. But I told him because I am your friend and would not want you to suffer from your actions I am just simply trying help. I offered my advice to Bob. Etc.

 

If the situation does not DIRECTLY involve a personal experience, think of the best and closest experience and tweak it.

 

My toughest question I was asked was: What DID you do if a friend told you a very discrete information and you MISUNDERSTOOD IT?

 

I thought oh-boy, its hard enough for some to tell me a very deep secret and then for me to misunderstand it???

 

Well, my friend (whom I won't name here, but I did name during the interview) had some family issues back in 2007 (include the time). He called me one night before during my finals period and was very, very upset. He explained to me his situation, "His mother were a frequent visitor to casinos and gambled away some most of his family's wealth. Now his family in Taiwan is experiencing problems and their parents are on the verge of divorce."

 

Well, I didn't misunderstand him because frankly my friend was clear. But I had to tweak the story, saying I thought it was more of a financial problem and I offered to lend him my savings so he can stay in Canada and finish his school. But later on I realized that he was really sad over the fact that his parents were going through a divorce and then I told him that he had to stand up for his family. He has the power to hold his family together and convince them to forgive each other and pull together as a family. I advised him to call both his parents separately and convince them to stay together because it is a lot harder if everyone had to deal with such situations alone and mad at one another. This maybe a test that God has put to bring the family together. And it ended in a happy ending.

 

For more "situational/if" questions think of as many possibilities as you can. Think of complications that can evolve, think how people can react to your situations differently. The more you say the more likely you will say what they want. (since you don't loose points for saying "irrelevant things" but you do get points for hitting a criteria they were looking for). So cover all grounds in a "if" situation.

 

Lastly, yes this is a standardized test, but you have to involve your listeners and really captivate them. If you do, they might give you an better grade if they were fluctuating between a 4 and a 5 out of 5.

 

I knew my interview at UBC went well, because the interviewers found my experiences compelling and spend most of their time listening and looking at me rather than looking down at their score sheet.

 

In the end, if you are moral, kind, compassionate, and possess the qualities to become a good citizen and a good health care provider. Then you just need to express yourself and your opinions. If you are not articulate, then work on your ability to speak to strangers.

 

If you lack the moral aspect, then you really need to change yourself.

 

Lastly, before the night of the interview, think about all the MAJOR experiences that has happened in your life. Ask yourself who it involved, when? where? how? what was the good outcome? What you would have done differently if the outcome was not good? etc. Get a goodnight sleep, put on your best smile! Be yourself! And be confident and humane. Use emotions, don't sound like a robot!

 

I hope this helped some of you! And good luck to everyone of you!

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Yup I second GGDAT.

 

Passing is AT MOST looked upon neutrally, it can't help you in any positive way. If anything it makes you look deficient and like you have no life. I was asked to describe incidents where I witnessed unethical behavior by my boss/had to dismiss somebody and I passed both. Not a good idea...I felt horrible even when I was trying to answer them hypothetically. I took a while to decide if I wanted to create a story on the spot or just try to evade the Q and answer in a hypothetical way but in the end I felt that if I conjure up a story as I go, it would show (eg. no details, contradict myself, get lost, ramble, etc) so I decided not to do that. They didn't want hypothetical answers so they asked different questions. But I can tell, it COULD NOT have affected things in a positive direction. :(

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