Situational Interview Preparation Guide

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If they have applied for management position they need to speak according to that and have their body language right for the job position.

Situational and behavioral interviews are gaining popularity among the HR department professionals and it is imperative that you start preparing them.

1) Jot down all the projects you have so far handled in your entire career.
2) All your positive and negative points while handling these projects.

(i) Environment
(ii) Behavior
(iii) Team members
(iv) Contribution
(v) Negative and positive aspects of the entire process.

Situational interviews generally have a concept which is entirely focused on your past performance and they believe it will reflect in the future performance of the candidate. Situational interviews test your analytical and problem solving skills specific to a situation. They would give you a problem (imaginative) and ask you to react and solve it accordingly. They would analyze your performance on how you handled the situation with minimal preparation, analytical and problem solving skills are specifically noticed. Some of these scenarios may have occurred in your work so it is a kind of behavioral interview questions.

1) How would you handle an angry customer who was promised of the delivery today but due to delay in testing, the product was not delivered on time? The customer needs compensation? How would you deal with the situation and the way you would speak with him?
2) You are a project manager and your team members are leaving the company in alarming ratio, what would you do? What`s the best known approach to you?
3) A project is given to you and in your analysis you found out that the project cannot be completed in time as per the specification. What would you do and how will you convey your message?
4) Company already has the project, how would you explain the client for time?
When you are asked this question the best way is to speak to the manager who gave you the project for extra employees if that cannot be done you would explain to the business development manager about the technicalities involved in it and in a soft tone that the project cannot be done in time. For this you would also give him the necessary charting, documents, etc.
5) What is the best way to be a part of the team in a new enterprise?
6) What would you do when you have learnt that the company you are working has just slipped into negative for the quarter?
7) Which one do you support open source or proprietary source?
8) Which is your favorite platform and programming language explain why?
9) How would you handle an employee who is arriving late daily to the office thus sending negative vibes throughout the company?
10) You are assigned a project in which there is a person who is less qualified to do the work and you are falling shorter of the progress what would you do?
11) What was your past experience in a project while handling a team?
12) Tell us about a situation in which you had to disagree with your superiors how did you handle it?
13) Tell us about a logical situation which you encountered during your project and how did you overcome it?
14) What was the chief reason to leave your ex employer and what made you to choose this company?
15) These days IT companies are having high ration of job hopping why do you think it is happening?
16) Why should the company hire you state some examples?
17) What are your achievements so far and what did you learn from them?
Before answering situational questions it is always good to have some stories written up from your previous work experience. Write stories on your last project how you handled it etc. Make sure that you speak with logic during situational interviews. Situational interviews are meant to test your stress factor, management skills, technical skills, etc.
18) You are working on a project which should be done entirely on a server suddenly your data is lost? In this situation what are the necessary precautions you could have taken which will help you at this point of time?
19) How do you explain to the client about the adoption of new technology?
20) There are instances when the program does not respond to the programming logic? What method will you employ to solve them?
21) Did you have any instances in which you would like to bang or hang your computer?
22) Do you regret taking this field?

Luckily, I have quite a bit of previous team experience, and have faced this situation a few times in the past -- so let me tell you how I've learned to handle the issue. The most important first step in dealing with an underperforming subordinate or team member is honest communications -- talking with the person can lead to some surprising discoveries, such as the person not understanding the assigned tasks to being overwhelmed with the assignment. Once I discovered the problem, I could then forge a solution that usually solved the problem and allowed the work to move forward. So often in situations like this, the problem is some combination of miscommunication and unrealistic expectations.

I would tell this co-worker that being dishonest to her boss, as well as her co-workers, is not wise, and being dishonest in her job is wrong. I would say how we all want more vacation time, but we have to earn it -- and that taking this extra time hurts everyone in the department because the person's absence will affect productivity.

The best way to convince people is to be able to understand where they are coming from and address their questions and concerns about the new idea directly. It is also important to stay confident and believe in yourself because if you don't buy it, no one else will either.

I would notify everyone working on the project of the changes. I would then want to know why the priorities have changed, and if there is risk of them changing again in the future. I would then meet with everyone involved with a new strategy to address the new priorities.