Job Interview Questions and Answers

When you are applying for a retail or customer service position a typical job interview question is "What is good customer service?" The interviewer wants to know what you consider quality customer service and how you would be willing to provide it to customers. 

Here is a selection of sample answers you can use to respond to questions about good customer service.

• Good customer service means having thorough knowledge of your inventory, experience with your products, and being able to help customers make the best choices for them.
• Good customer service is treating customers with a friendly, helpful attitude.
• Good customer service means helping customers efficiently, in a friendly manner. It's one of the things that can set your business apart from the others of it's kind.

More Retail Interview Questions and Answers
 
More common retail and customer service interview questions and sample answers. 

More Interview Questions and Answers
 
Questions you'll be asked when interviewing, how to prepare answers to interview questions, along with sample answers to typical job interview questions.

Business insider google interview questions

Increasingly, I'm turning to Google+ as a source of news, and it looks like I'm not the only one. On Thursday, news of a small earthquake broke on both Twitter and Google+. One curious user, +Keith Barrett, decided to try and find out which social network was faster with the news. Turns out it was a tie. As Google integrates Google+ more closely with the rest of its services, and more users post relevant stories, I think we'll start to see Google+ as a place that can create and break stories, as well as share them.

Hashtags to Track

This week was a great week for news, and luckily, since Google+ enabled hashtags, many people are starting to tag their posts. Below, some of the most interesting ones to follow this week:

• #googleplusupdate
• #googlephotos
• #FoodFriday
• #gaddafi
• #earthquake
• #stevejobs

Google+ Photos Gets a Few Tweaks

Google seems to be really focused on tweaking Google+ Photos. With over 3.4 billion uploaded photos, it may be the most popular feature from Google+, aside from Hangouts. Friday evening, +Roshni Malani announced a minor but significant change to Google+ Photos. When you open a Google+ Photo album, you'll also see at the bottom, the very first post that shared the album, along with +1s and comments.
Earlier in the week, +Tim St. Clair told us that now we can change how our albums are shared, and from one menu, lock the album, change who the album is shared with, and hide geographical information on the album itself.

Business insider google interview questions

1. Set aside the time every day. Psychiatrist Dr. Charles Raison told CNN that meditating for even five minutes a day can lead to major benefits. "What you should begin to notice if you’re doing it correctly [is that] you’ll feel like things are a little bit more slowed down, you’ll feel a little bit less stressed out, you’ll have a larger perspective on things," he says. "So rather than getting sort of stuck on little irritating details, you’ll find it easier to take a look at the whole picture and stay calmer in dealing with all the things you have to deal with every day.”

Raison says that while meditating, "Some people find it useful to have a little clock that they can put in front of them where they can just glance at it so they know [how much time] has passed."
On the other hand, Business Insider's Pennell—who meditates for 45 minutes every morning—uses an iPhone app called a "Zen Timer" because "it stills feels like a distraction having to worry about time," she says.

2. Create a specific space to meditate. Just like going to the gym or the office, having a designated space to perform a task is psychologically motivating. This could be as simple as having a cushion at the end of your bed, or a corner of a room decorated in a way that calms your mind. 

"There have been times when I've had a really busy week and a lot has been going on and I'll sit down on the cushion and then I'll just start crying and I'll realize that I'm so sad about this one thing, but I had no space to grieve, no space to think about it; I was zipping from one thing to the other all week," says Pennell, who has studied at Insight Meditation Society, one of the top meditation centers in the country. "One of my meditation teachers likened it to a washing machine. You put the laundry in, maybe all the water comes out gray and the laundry comes out clean. It gives you space to experience what is happening, too."

3. Focus on your breathing. The key to any meditation practice is focusing on the breath. Controlled breathing stabilizes blood pressure and increases oxygen flow, thereby increasing alertness, reports Pooja Biraia at medimanage.com. She says to "stay silent and focus. Inhale and exhale in controlled and deep breaths ... your stomach should rise as you inhale; and you need to draw your navel in as you exhale." This is known as mindful breathing or pranayama.

"Meditation is a word like 'exercise,'" says Pennell. "If someone says 'exercise,' there are 3,000 ways you could do it. A very simple type of meditation for beginners is mindfulness, which is watching your breath. Find your own way and what works for you."

Pennell also says that, even after a few years of practicing, "I get distracted, too, but one of the things that meditation teaches is muscle memory, repetition. You sit on the cushion so many times, your body and nervous system start to learn the practice. It trains the brain to notice when you're getting distracted. Meditation creates more decision space around everyday tasks."

4. Read about meditation. To develop a truly successful meditation practice, it's important to understand the philosophy behind it. Pennell recommends reading "Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom," by Rick Hanson, and books by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

But there's a lot of literature out there. Browse the bookstore aisles to find something that resonates and infuses your spirit. Even reading a few simple passages from a daily meditation guide can dramatically improve your perspective.

140 Google Interview Questions

Google Interview Questions: Product Marketing Manager

• Why do you want to join Google?
• What do you know about Google’s product and technology?
• If you are Product Manager for Google’s Adwords, how do you plan to market this?
• What would you say during an AdWords or AdSense product seminar?
• Who are Google’s competitors, and how does Google compete with them?
• Have you ever used Google’s products? Gmail?
• What’s a creative way of marketing Google’s brand name and product?
• If you are the product marketing manager for Google’s Gmail product, how do you plan to market it so as to achieve 100 million customers in 6 months?
• How much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads?
• Name a piece of technology you’ve read about recently. Now tell me your own creative execution for an ad for that product.
• Say an advertiser makes $0.10 every time someone clicks on their ad. Only 20% of people who visit the site click on their ad. How many people need to visit the site for the advertiser to make $20?
• Estimate the number of students who are college seniors, attend four-year schools, and graduate with a job in the United States every year.

Google Interview Questions: Product Manager

• How would you boost the GMail subscription base?
• What is the most efficient way to sort a million integers?
• How would you re-position Google’s offerings to counteract competitive threats from Microsoft?
• How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
• You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
• How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
• How would you find out if a machine’s stack grows up or down in memory?
• Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
• How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?
• You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?
• Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
• Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?
• In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
• If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?
• If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!)
• Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?
• You are at a party with a friend and 10 people are present including you and the friend. your friend makes you a wager that for every person you find that has the same birthday as you, you get $1; for every person he finds that does not have the same birthday as you, he gets $2. would you accept the wager?
• How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
• You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?
• You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)
• You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.
• Describe a technical problem you had and how you solved it.
• How would you design a simple search engine?
• Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.
• There’s a latency problem in South Africa. Diagnose it.
• What are three long term challenges facing Google?
• Name three non-Google websites that you visit often and like. What do you like about the user interface and design? Choose one of the three sites and comment on what new feature or project you would work on. How would you design it?
• If there is only one elevator in the building, how would you change the design? How about if there are only two elevators in the building?
• How many vacuum’s are made per year in USA?

Business systems analyst interview questions

Are you a small business owner? If you are, how is your business currently going? When first starting a small business, there are many small business owners who decide to start out small. This often involves being the only employee or just hiring family members. Limiting the number of employees that you start off with is a great way to limit your business expenses, but there may come a time when you need to hire additional help. If and when that time comes, do you know what you should do? If not, you will want to continue reading on.

Whether you run an online store, a storefront retail store, or an office-like business, you will need all job applicants to either submit their resumes or fill out a job application. In all honesty, it might be easier to have them do both. You can easily make your own job applications or you can purchase standard job applications from many office supplies stores, either on or offline. Once you have a collection of resumes and job applications, you may then want to think about going through those papers to find applicants that you would like to schedule a job interview with.

When it comes to finding the perfect employee or employees for your small business, the interview process plays an important role. It is during an interview where you are able to learn as much as you can about a job applicant, particularly if he or she is right for you and your small business. The best way that is this is done is by asking the right questions. Just a few of the many that questions that you will want to think about asking your job applicants are outlined below.

As a small business owner, you already know that you need to compete with larger businesses, ones that may have more money and resources than you do. The way that you can do this is with good customer service. Although it is important that you know this, your employees need to know this as well. You will want to ask your applicants if they know the difference between a large business and a small business, as well as what sets a small business apart from a large one. Also, ask them if they know why some customers prefer doing business with small businesses, like yours. If you cannot get the answers that you were looking for, it may be best to move on to the next applicant right away.

Since customer service is what often sets small businesses, like yours, apart from large corporations, you need to make sure that you hire employees who have good customer service skills. During a job interview, you will want to ask all of your applicants about their people skills. Do they think that they have good people skills? Do they find it easy to strike up conversations with customers or those who they don’t personally know? You will want to hire an employee or employees who are easily able to communicate with customers, on a wide variety of different topics, including business topics and silly topics like the weather.

Fifteen Questions to Ask at a Job Interview

Develop a list of questions designed to elicit responses that will be most helpful in evaluating a candidate's suitability for your position and organization. These questions can get you started:

• Can you tell me a little about yourself? A confident applicant can give a brief summary of his or her strengths, significant achievements, and career goals.
  
  
• What interests you about this job, and what skills and strengths can you bring to it? Stronger candidates should be able to correlate their skills with specific job requirements.
  
  
• Can you tell me a little about your current job? Strong candidates should be able to give you a short and precise summary of duties and responsibilities.
  
  
• In a way that anyone could understand, can you describe a professional success you are proud of? The answer shows the applicant’s ability to explain what he or she does clearly.
  
  
• How have you changed the nature of your current job? A convincing answer here shows adaptability and a willingness to “take the bull by the horns,” if necessary.
  
  
• What was the most difficult decision you ever had to make on the job? The answer to this question tells you the person’s decision-making style and how it fits into your company culture.
  
  
• Why did you decide to pursue a new job? This question is just a different way of asking, “What are you looking for in a job?”
  
  
• Why did you leave your last job, and what have you been doing since then? It isn’t really unusual for highly competent people to find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own. Try to get specific, factual answers that you can verify later.
  
  
• Who was your best boss ever and why? Who was the worst, and looking back, what could you have done to make that relationship better? These answers give you insight into how the candidate views and responds to supervision.
  
  
• Which do you enjoy the most: working alone with information or working with other people? An excellent candidate might say the different perspectives within a group produce more innovative ideas than one person working alone can, but without information, a team can’t get very far.
  
  
• What sort of things do you think your current (past) company could do to be more successful? You’re probing to find out whether the candidate has a clear understanding of his or her current or past employer’s missions and goals and whether he or she thinks in terms of those goals.
  
  
• Can you describe a typical day at work in your last job? See how the applicant’s current (or most recent) routine compares with the requirements of the job in question.
  
  
• What sort of work environment do you prefer? What brings out your best performance? Probe for specifics. You want to find out whether this person is going to fit into your company.
  
  
• How do you handle conflict? Can you give me an example of how you handled a workplace conflict in the past? You want candidates who try to be reasonable but nonetheless stand up for what’s right.
  
  
• How would you respond if you were put in a situation you felt presented a conflict of interest or was unethical? Have you ever had this experience in previous positions? No rational candidate today is going to say that sometimes it’s okay to be unethical. But how individuals approach this question can offer valuable insights.

Top 5 insightful interview questions

1. Describe a work situation where you were at your happiest
 
Nobody is going to admit being a poor team player in an interview but this question will reveal whether they prefer to work independently, in a team or as a manager. Notice what role they have in the scenario they describe. 

2. Why are you choosing to do what you’re doing?
 
This question gives you an insight in to whether a candidate is at ‘cause or effect’ ie. Do they make their life happen or are they a victim to it? Small businesses want to recruit people who take responsibility and are proactive rather than people who make excuses. Notice whether they talk about opportunities and possibilities or obligation and duty? 


3. What do you want in a job?
 
Again, listen out for whether they’re using positive or negative language ie are they telling you what they want or what they want to avoid? People who are positively motivated towards goals tend to produce more consistent results. For example, someone motivated by achievement will be more consistent than someone who is motivated by not wanting to get fired! 

4. What is the relationship between what you’re doing this year in your career and last year?
 
The responses you get to this will vary in terms of whether they highlight things that are the same or different. People who only talk about the differences between this year and last year are likely to be more creative but probably won’t stay in the job so long. Conversely those who talk about everything that’s the same will be less innovative – they won’t see the point in changing things unless they’re broken. A mixture is probably ideal. 


5. What was your biggest mistake and how did you handle it?
 
You don't want people on your team who points fingers at other people when something goes wrong. If they can't take personal responsibility it will undermine your team. 

So, this is one of those good interview questions that can be very revealing. What you really want to hear is someone being honest about their mistakes but also sharing what they learned from the experience.