Matthew W. Lucas
Attorney at Law

703.821.5522		e-mail: mlucas@cs.net

Employment Issues

Interviewing:

Good interviewing techniques are the beginning of a good employee-employer relationship. The job description and application are just the preliminary props for the interview. The interview is the opportunity to get a better picture of the potential employee and to sell the position. These questions should be the first step to a successful employee-employer relationship.

Questions to understand interviewee’s attitudes:

Focusing on general attitude:

How do you go about making important decisions?
Can you describe some instance in your life that you would consider a failure (Why do you think it occurred? Why do you consider it a failure.)
What do you consider your most significant accomplishments in your business life?
What do you do when you have trouble solving a problem?
Would you describe what you did yesterday/day before yesterday in detail? (This will give an idea of ability to organize thoughts and express them in an orderly fashion.)
Tell me three characteristics about yourself.

Focusing on attitudes that which are more job related:

Describe the best boss you ever had.
What have been the biggest failures or frustrations in your business life?
What are the qualities of success in your field?

Focusing on previous job:

What do you consider the single most important change or idea you contributed or made in your present/previous job?
What risks did you take in your last few jobs, and what was the result of these risks? (Describe how you "went out on a limb" for an idea, person, or activity).
What are the most difficult aspects of your current job, and how do you approach them?
What specific strengths did you bring to your last job? (Characteristics which made you an effective employee?)
What did you do to make yourself more effective in your last job?

Focusing on current position:

Why are you interested in this particular job?
What specific strengths do you think you can bring to this position.
What do you think it takes for a person to be successful?
Why do you think we should hire you?
What do you think might differentiate you from other applicants?
What kind of references do you think your previous employers will give you?

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