SAMPLE
BEHAVIORAL
QUESTIONS
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Can you tell me about a time you failed?
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What are your weaknesses?
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Can you tell me about a time you used complex data to solve a problem?
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Can you tell me about yourself?
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Why do you want to work here?
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Why do you want to work in this role?
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Describe a time when you worked well as part of a team.
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What did you do in your last job? Can you describe it for me?
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Can you describe to me a situation where you overcame a difficult problem or obstacle?
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What is your greatest accomplishment?
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What are your long term plans?
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Are you interviewing with any other companies?
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Tell me about a time you took initiative or a leadership role?
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What are your hobbies?
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How would your friends describe you?
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Do you have any questions for us?
TIPS
FOR
ANSWERING
BEHAVIORAL
QUESTIONS
TIPS FOR ANSWERING BEHAVIORAL QUESTIONS
Q1 ANALYSIS
Before answering this question, it is important to understand what an interviewer is trying to learn by asking this question. The interviewer does not want a confession nor does he care about what you specifically failed at. What the interviewer wants to do is to learn about who you are as a person, specifically how honest you are about your work, how you handle challenges, and how you rectify failure.
Simply sharing about a time that you failed an exam, lost at a competition, or did not meet expectations, does nothing to reveal the desirable traits in a new hire that employers are seeking. What is important is demonstrating an understanding of how to respond to failure. Therefore, choose a failure where you can explain the following key points:
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An understanding of why you failed
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How you communicated and were transparent with those of whom you had failed
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The efforts you took to rectify the problem
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Changes you made to your practices to prevent future repeats
If your story of a time you failed does not explain the above, it is not worth sharing. It is also important to note that the reason of failure in your story should never be due to malice, poor attitude, or lacking ethical integrity. A good example would be one where the mistake was honest, albeit due to inexperience, lack of attention to detail, or lack of foresight.
CHECK ANSWER
Can you tell me about a time you failed?
Q1 EXAMPLES
Here is an example answer to the above question:
At my previous internship, I often worked on various client-facing reports which were often faced with a tight schedule. Previously, I had completed several of these reports without issues and therefore in my overconfidence I began to take shortcuts. Additionally, as work accumulated, I did not implement new practices to organizing and managing my files. It was inevitable that a mistake would eventually arise given how I was currently doing things at the time. I made a mistake on a report that was sent out to the client. Both the manager and the client did not immediately recognize the issue, however, I decided to communicate to my boss that the report would need to be retracted for corrections. The boss, while irritated, appreciated my transparency and handled communications with the client. Thankfully, I was given the opportunity to make fixes without severe consequences. Additionally, I was able to restore confidence with my boss by explaining to him improvements to my workflows and best practices in order to prevent a repeat.
CHECK ANSWER
Can you tell me about a time you failed?
Q2 ANALYSIS
This is one of the more challenging questions in an interview because it is asking the interviewee to effectively sabotage his or her own desirability. At the same time, interviewers will not look positively at interviewees who try to evade or avoid directly answering the question. With this in mind, the goal of any interviewee’s response to this question is to provide a valid and transparent response while also minimizing the damage to their desirability as a new hire.
Whatever possible weaknesses interviewees may choose to use, there are some answers that are never acceptable. Interviewees should never admit a deficiency in a skill very critical to the job. Additionally, interviewees should never admit or imply a behavioural issue such as being a poor team player, being lazy, or lacking punctuality as these are core professional traits that everybody should have. Finally, interviewees should never give a fake response like “I’m a perfectionist”, because this is seen as disingenuous and a non-answer.
CHECK ANSWER
What are your weaknesses?
Q2 EXAMPLES
A good example of a weakness that fits this criterion is poor English (assuming the first language of the interviewee is not English). Although English is a crucial skill in any Canadian workplace, admitting a lack of proficiency in English will not damage an interviewee’s desirability because the interviewer has already determined how well the interviewee speaks English based on the interview. The interviewer will already know that the interviewee is weak in English, and therefore, while this is a valid response it does not actually impact the interviewee’s chances.
Inexperience is another valid answer. While experience is very important, the interviewer has already carefully reviewed the resume of the interviewee and yet the interviewer has chosen to speak with the interviewee despite the lack of experience. Therefore, admitting a weakness that the interviewer already knows will not have a net negative impact. Additionally, inexperience is not unique to most applicants to entry-level positions and therefore this weakness, while real, does not particularly impact the interviewee relative to his/her peers.
A third possible weakness is being a poor public speaker. Public speaking is often a valued skill in professional work environments as employees often have to share their perspectives and opinions on various matters. However, public speaking is rarely so critical to an entry-level position that a weakness in this area can ruin an applicant’s chances of being given a job offer.
CHECK ANSWER
What are your weaknesses?
Q3 ANALYSIS
When answering this question, it is important to have a structured and analytical approach to your response. A good response will not merely inform the interviewer that you had used data in the past, but that you can think critically about problems from beginning to end, and that you demonstrate a full range of competencies crucial to the Data Analyst’s skillset. Generally, responses should more or less follow this structure:
Problem Identification
Data gathering, cleansing, and management
Data exploration
Data modeling and validation
Storytelling and visualization
CHECK ANSWER
Can you tell me about a time you used complex data to solve a problem?
Q3 EXAMPLES
In my final year of business school, my team’s capstone project was to provide recommendations to a relatively new player in the Canadian grain handling, storage, and transportation industry. The company had invested in a logistics center in Ontario that struggled to breakeven in the past few fiscal years.
In order to understand how the logistics center worked, my team physically went to the logistics center in rural Ontario and gathered key operational statistics on the facility. From here, we were able to build a conceptual flow chart of operations with all the necessary information to understand the capacity, efficiency, and utilization of each stage of the system.
Additional data was gathered from various databases accessed online through various government departments and independent agencies. This data included information on the crops being grown in Southern Ontario, their growing cycles, historical trends in land allocation, crop yields, and their prices. We consolidated, standardized, and cleaned the data gathered here so that it can be used for our studies.
From the external data gathered, we were able to develop an understanding of crop cycles, farming trends, and the impact of volatile weather on crop yields. We transposed these insights with how the operations of the facility performed. From here, we were able to develop a model of the facility and used statistical methods such as regression and Monte Carlo simulation techniques to test the performance of the facility under various scenarios.
We were able to discover that the issue was not of revenue maximization but risk management. We compiled and visualized our insights using a combination of Excel and Tableau which were then presented to the company’s Board in a PowerPoint slide deck. Our final recommendations were to make various investments to diversify the facility’s operations in order to handle several types of grains, thereby diversifying risk, and expanding storage capacity to capitalize on positive tail risk of seasons with higher than average crop yields.
CHECK ANSWER
Can you tell me about a time you used complex data to solve a problem?
SAMPLE
BEHAVIORAL
QUESTIONS
-
Can you tell me about a time you failed?
-
What are your weaknesses?
-
Can you tell me about a time you used complex data to solve a problem?
-
Can you tell me about yourself?
-
Why do you want to work here?
-
Why do you want to work in this role?
-
Describe a time when you worked well as part of a team.
-
What did you do in your last job? Can you describe it for me?
-
Can you describe to me a situation where you overcame a difficult problem or obstacle?
-
What is your greatest accomplishment?
-
What are your long term plans?
-
Are you interviewing with any other companies?
-
Tell me about a time you took initiative or a leadership role?
-
What are your hobbies?
-
How would your friends describe you?
-
Do you have any questions for us?