Interview question types

The following summarises the main types of interview questions you may encounter, and how to approach them.

Opening questions

The initial questions are normally relatively easy to answer and can help you settle into the interview. Alternatively, an employer may ask you to prepare a short presentation at the beginning of the interview. Use this as an opportunity to set a positive tone.

The simplest form of an opening question is “Tell me about yourself?”. You may be also asked about:

• Your degree (and module choices)
• Your projects / dissertation
• Your work experience
• Extracurricular activities

Be prepared to talk about yourself. Which aspects of yourself that you may be asked about can depend on the opportunity itself. For example, if you are interviewing for a technical role, you may be asked to summarise your research dissertation. Where possible, highlight aspects of that experience that directly relate to the role itself.

Motivational and skills questions

Motivation questions check your knowledge of the job or course. They also help you to evidence your motivation, and whether your understanding of the opportunity is realistic.

Questions could include:

• Why do you want the job / course?
• Why do you want to work for our organisation / research group?
• Tell us about a current news story in our industry. How do you think it will affect our organisation?
• What do you think we can learn from our competitors?

Effective research can help you to prepare for these types of questions. For example, you might find out more about their projects, clients, values, working practices and personal development opportunities etc. By knowing more about them you will have more to talk about, and will therefore be more effective in specifically evidencing your motivation and your understanding of the opportunity.

Competency-based questions

These questions are based on the competencies or qualities that an employer is seeking for a particular job, usually detailed in the job specification or advert.

The interviewer looks for evidence of your relevant skills and so may ask you to describe examples of when you have, for instance, worked in teams, motivated others, or dealt with a difficult situation.

Use ‘STAR’ to help you structure your answers

• Situation– Provide some brief details about the situation so that the reader can understand the context of the example
• Task – Explain the objective/purpose, i.e. what you were aiming to do
• Action – Describe what you did. Summarise your actions in 4 or 5 individual steps, if possible
• Result – Finish with the outcome. Show that you met your objectives and, if appropriate, comment on what you learnt from the experience

Do not try to rehearse your answers word-for-word. Instead think of your key information and experiences and use the questions as opportunities to describe these, using the STAR structure as a guide.

Strength-based questions

Strength-based recruitment is growing in popularity amongst recruiters. This is due to increasing evidence that when someone is working to their strengths, they are more likely to have greater confidence, resilience, goal achievement, performance and engagement in their roles. This can have wider benefits to the employer due to having happier, more engaged and productive employees.

Strength-based questions aim to assess you against the strengths that are required in the role. Interviewers will seek to assess your personal attributes, identify your abilities and look for genuine pride in what you do. They tend to ask questions relatively quickly in order to get a genuine response, which means you’ll probably be asked quite a few questions.

Questions could be quite broad, such as:

• What energises you?
• What activities come naturally to you?
• In your life, what have you done that you are most proud of?

Or specific / situational-based questions:

• During your weekly team meeting, you volunteer to take the lead on an exciting new project. After the meeting, a colleague approaches you and asks whether you would like to generate some ideas together. What do you do?
• You are working with two new colleagues on a critical project due to be completed in 4 days. Everyone has different ideas on how the project should run and there is some conflict. You haven’t made much progress on the first day. If this were you, how would you approach this situation and how would it make you feel?

Interviewers will take note of your body language and tone of voice, which provide cues to what you have enjoyed. For example, if someone is genuinely enthused by an experience they tend to become more animated, their tone of voice is upbeat and they will sit up straight, smile and look happy.

To identify your strengths, think about activities you did last week. What did you enjoy and made you feel energetic? Reflect on this, and write down the strengths that you used in those activities. It could also be helpful to get an honest perspective of your strengths from those close to you, including friends and family members.

To prepare for a strengths-based interview:

• Create a list of your strengths through active self-reflection.
• Consider what evidence can you give for the strengths you claim to have. Think of examples of when you’ve used a strength.
• Research how your strengths fit with the organisational culture.
• Be enthusiastic and energetic when talking about a strength. This isn’t easy to manufacture so try to talk about genuine strengths.
• Understand your weaknesses and what you do not enjoy doing. This will demonstrate your growth areas.

Hypothetical questions

These types of questions typically present you a problem of some kind. For example, it may be a technical problem for a scientific role, a case study for a management consultancy role, or a customer service scenario in a customer-facing role.

Take time to think through the problem and describe your thought process. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or seek clarification. Your approach to the problem and your analytical thinking are being assessed and sometimes getting the “right” answer is less important than demonstrating your creativity, logical approach and enthusiasm for the challenge.

It may be helpful for you to structure your response, as follows:

• Identify the situation
• Analyse it
• Generate possible solutions
• Make a decision
• Plan your action

PG study and research

Interviews for PG study or research will vary tremendously depending on the institution concerned as well as the type of course and academic discipline. For example, if you are applying for a programme with a high research content, it is likely that you will be asked about previous academic projects and other research experience you may have.

You’ll also be expected to talk about your research interests, showing that you have read relevant papers, particularly those by your potential supervisor. For more vocational courses, you are likely to be asked to explain your relevant work experience and skills you have developed, plus your career interests.

More obvious questions you may be asked include why you want to undertake the programme and why you have chosen that institution. You will need to demonstrate genuine enthusiasm when you answer these. It is also your chance to find out as much as you can about the opportunity, so prepare a few questions about the course, facilities, academics and anything else where you’ve not been able to find the information on their website or course information.

Key Tasks

1. Reflect on yourself, your experiences and the research you have undertaken on the opportunity. Where can you identify a match between yourself and the opportunity? How will you demonstrate your motivation? What examples will you use to demonstrate you meet their criteria?

2. If you are doing a competency-based interview, try the ‘Question Identifier Tool’ in the Aptitude Test Portal. Here, you can explore different example competency-based questions along with their corresponding response, which uses the STAR structure.

3. Get more comfortable with the different types of questions you could be asked. Our mock interview videos include examples of a competency-based interview, a strength-based interview, as well as example interviews for PG study and teacher training. View using a VR headset or any smart device.