[ACTIVITY] Soft Skills Questions You Could Be Asked During An Interview

Here are 29 sample behavioral-based interviewing questions that companies and organizations use to help assess a person’s leadership ability, teamwork and other soft skills.

Below the questions there are two activities you can do with your group.

To be a rock star at answering these questions you have to tell clear, concise, and compelling stories and give relevant examples of your skills and actions.

If you want an easy method for doing this, read How To Tell Your Story In Professional Settings.

Some of the questions can be tough to answer if you haven’t properly prepared for your interview and obviously, a few of these questions are only for people interviewing for  leadership or management positions. If you have any others to add, please let me know.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

1. Timing is very important in communications sometimes… tell me about a time when your timing was very good and one when it was bad.

2. Tell me about a time when you “put your foot in your mouth” and what happened.

3. All of us feel shy or socially uncomfortable at times – when have you felt this way about communicating? How has that influenced your career?

4. Tell me about a time when you were proud of your ability to restrain yourself from saying something.

5. Have you ever worked for a very introverted manager? How did you ensure you were communicating effectively?

6. Describe your communication style and give me an example of when it was effective and ineffective.

7. How skillful do you think you are at “figuring out” others? Give me an example.

8. What was the hardest “sell” of a new idea or method you have had to make to get it accepted?

CUSTOMER SERVICE

9. What types of experiences have you had dealing with irate customers or clients? What did you learn from those experiences?

LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, & TEAMWORK

10. Tell me about a time when you had difficulty getting others to work together on a critical problem and how you handled it.

11. Describe how you developed relationships with others when you were new on your current/ most recent job.

12. Some leaders encourage people to work together while others encourage direct competition among their people. Tell me about the best leader you have worked with, what approach that person took and what you learned.

13. Describe the types of teams you have worked in and tell me what worked well and what did not.

14. What are the critical factors you look for in evaluating the work of others? How did you develop these concepts and how, specifically, do you use them?

15. Give me an example of a situation in which you managed or led a team and were able to create a high morale, high productivity work group.

16. What has been your experience in dealing with the poor performance of subordinates?

17. Tell me when you think it is important for a manager or leader to use an inclusive style and involve work unit members in making decisions.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION & PROBLEM SOLVING

18. Describe a time when you were able to reverse a very negative situation at work.

19. Have you ever worked for an extremely talkative manager? How did you ensure you were communicating effectively?

20. Describe a time when you had problems with a supervisor and had to communicate your unhappy feelings or difficult disagreements. Tell me what you did and what happened.

21. Describe a really difficult person you worked with and how you handled working with that person.

22. When you are dealing with co-workers or customers, what really tries your patience and how do you deal with that?

23. Describe how you changed the opinion of someone who seemed to have a very negative opinion of you.

24. Describe a situation in which you had to solve a problem without having all the information you needed – what did you do and what happened?

25. Describe a problem you faced that was almost overwhelming and how you got through it and kept from being completely overwhelmed.

26. Have you ever had to work with a team of people who did not work well together or did not like each other? Tell me what happened and how you reacted.

DIVERSITY

27. Describe some of the most unusual people you have known; what was different about them and how did you work with them?

SELF-AWARENESS

28. What words do your current co-workers use to describe you and how accurate do you think these are? If they are not accurate, what do you think caused the person to choose that word?

29. Tell me about a time when you solved a problem through intuition and how that happened.

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SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1. Without allowing them to look at the questions, have individuals choose a number between 1-29. The individual will answer the question that corresponds with the chosen number. Individuals will give their answer to the entire group or team. (Optional: Have group discussion based on answers from the group.)

2. Break you group into pairs or teams. Conduct some mock interviews using these questions.