Effective Interview Techniques for Employers
Reading Time: 5 minutesEffective Interview Techniques for Employers, a guide by Ten Percent Group of Legal Recruitment Websites for solicitors and legal executives.
Interview Question and Answer
Interview Question and Answer 52 – Why haven’t you had many interviews?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInterview Question and Answer 52 – Why haven’t you had many interviews? An article including an example answer from Ten Percent Legal Recruitment.
Interview Question 51 – Give an example of how a situation or project that had a positive outcome depended on the work of people from a wide range of backgrounds and ideas.
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInterview Question 51 – Give an example of how a situation or project that had a positive outcome depended on the work of people – suggested answer.
Interview Question & Answer 50 – Give an example of a recent commercial deal that captured your attention
Reading Time: < 1 minuteLegal Job Interview Question & Answer from Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten Percent Legal Recruitment.
Interview Question & Answer 49 – Give an example of a project or task that you felt compelled to complete on your own. What stopped you from delegating?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteGive an example of a project or task that you felt compelled to complete on your own. What stopped you from delegating? Answer from Ten Percent Legal
Interview Question 48 – Explain the organisational structure in your last company and how you fitted into it?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInterview question and answer – explain the organisational structure in your last company and how you fitted into it? Advice from Ten Percent Legal Recruitment.
Interview Question & Answer 45 – Do you need other people around to stimulate you or are you self-motivated?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInterview question on self-motivation and suggested answers from Jonathan Fagan at Ten Percent Legal Recruitment.
Interview Question and Answer – Do you know how to motivate other people?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInterview question and answer on knowing how to motivate people.
Interview Question 42 – Do you feel you are ready to take on greater responsibilities?
Reading Time: 2 minutesInterview Question and suggested answer from Ten Percent Legal Recruitment and Jonathan Fagan MD.
Interview Question & Answer no.40 – Do You Consider Yourself Successful?
Reading Time: 2 minutesDo you consider yourself successful?
Interview Question 38 – Did you increase sales or profits in your last job?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This is a difficult question if you have not worked in a senior managerial post or sales and profits did not increase in your last job. This is also difficult if you are applying at a time of recession rather than at a time of boom because sales and profits do not necessarily increase…
Interview Question 37 – Did you feel you progressed satisfactorily in your last job?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This is a loaded question, if you say anything negative about a former employer it immediately makes the interviewer think you are likely to consider them in a similar fashion in a few years’ time. If however your application to the firm has been on the basis that there has been a lack of…
Interview Question – did you enjoy university?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInterview Question 36 Advice This again is a fairly simple question with a fairly straight forward answer to it. Remember at all times in interview you must stay positive. Failing to stay positive will result in firms unnecessarily considering you to have negative thoughts. Negative thoughts in interview indicates someone who may be overly critical…
Interview Question – Did your (university) course live up to expectations?
Reading Time: 2 minutesInterview Question 35 – Did the course live up to your expectations? Advice This relates specifically to somebody who has just left university and has very little work experience for the interviewer to discuss and explore. It will rarely be asked of anyone who has been out of college or university for a number of…
Interview Question 34 – Describe your strongest and weakest colleagues – how do you cope with such diverse personalities?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This is a difficult question because it is asking you to in some way criticise work colleagues and to perhaps idolise other work colleagues. This is a question potentially loaded towards the interviewer as opposed to the interviewee. At its rawest form you could end up giving an answer that indicates to the interview…
Interview Question 33 – Describe the project or idea that you were most satisfied to sell to your management.
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAdvice This is another question where you need to have a stock of answers ready to be tailored according to the particular question that is put to you. This one gives you the chance to demonstrate something of quality that pushes your case with the company in relation to the role you are applying for…
Inappropriate interview question – are you the type of person to cry if someone shouts at you?
Reading Time: 2 minutesWe do see some gems of interview questions coming our way, and this one is our favourite at the moment. Are you the type of person to cry if someone shouts at you? What a question, and perhaps the person asking it was really testing the interviewee to see how they would respond. Would the…
Interview Question and Answer – describe a time that you failed to sell an idea that you knew was the right one.
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAdvice This is a negative question and one that wherever possible should be avoided. It does not matter how you answer the question, the answer you give will have to result in you providing the interviewer with evidence of a negative point. Wit this in mind it is worth trying to avoid answering the question…
Interview Question – Describe a time when you had a number of conflicting demands on your time and how you dealt with this.
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This question is quite an easy one, but it is important not to fall into the trap of giving a general answer instead of a specific one. The question has asked you to describe a time, not a circumstance that you regularly find yourself in. Try to think of a specific occasion when you…
Interview Question & Answer – Describe a time when you failed to engage at the right level in your organisation. Why did you do that and how did you handle the situation?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This is a competency based interview question which again if you do not practice interview questions it is very unlikely you would be able to think of an answer on the spur of the moment. This needs to be one of the selection of scenarios you have stored in your head ready to use…
Interview Question and Answer – Describe a situation where you had a disagreement or an argument with a superior – how did you handle it?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice A very difficult question indeed. Firstly because if you have ever had a disagreement with your superior it clearly indicates that you are someone who maybe a little awkward at work. Not only that but you are introducing a negative into the interview process which is not recommended. However if you don’t answer the…
Legal Job Interview Question and Answer – Are you willing to travel?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAdvice This question is one of the easiest to give a response to and does not appear to carry any risks at all with the response. Quite obviously you do need to indicate that you are willing to travel as if this was not part of the job then presumably the employer would not have…
Legal Job Interview Question & Answer – Describe a Situation when you had a communicate a message..
Reading Time: 2 minutesQuestion 21 – Describe a situation when you had to communicate a message to someone knowing that you were right and they were wrong and reluctant to accept your point of view. Advice This type of competency based interview question is more difficult because you need to think of a situation when there has been…
Legal Job Interview Question and Answer – Describe a project or situation where you had to use different leadership styles to reach your goal?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This is a question involving the STAR technique and another example of a question where you need to have specific projects and incidents stored in your brain ready to be adapted to answer these questions. The author of this article thinks that this approach to interviewing is not particularly good or effective. The technique…
Legal Job Interview Question and Answer – describe a company you think is doing well or badly and explain why you think this is so?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice Preferably you will have been asked this question with just the well as opposed to the badly bit as it is a general rule in interviews that wherever possible you try to avoid any negative comment or thought about anything. It does make a difference to the perception of the interviewer if you focus…
Legal Job Interview Question and Answer – Are you hoping for specialisation in a particular field. If so, why?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This is a loaded question and one you need to be very careful about answering. If you are applying for a junior post, for example a training contract with a solicitors’ firm, you really should not be giving any indication at this stage of an interest to specialise in. You simply do not know…
Legal Job Interview Question and Answer – Are you considering any other positions at the moment?
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvice This question really depends on the circumstances of the interview. If you have been headhunted, are currently in employment and not particularly looking until you were approached then it would be perfectly acceptable to give a straightforward answer. If not, you need to consider your response very carefully. If you give an affirmative answer…
Legal Job Interview Question and Answer – Are you Competitive?
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAdvice This again is a question that almost requires you to say yes. If you say no it almost indicates that you really don’t care about your work or your activities. You are the type of person who is happy just to turn up to work each day and sit at a desk for 8…
in Interviews
Interview Question – What can you contribute to a team?
Reading Time: 2 minutesA cursed question to anyone who has not worked with business speak before. The reality is that the concept of teamwork is somewhat different in a law firm – the majority of decisions are made at senior level, and although more junior staff are informed that they need to be ‘team players’, very often the…