How To Answer Job Experience Interview Questions

Interviewing allows you to show your personality, describe your skill set and explain your background, qualifications and motivations for a job, industry or career. Questions specifically about your experience can help employers picture you in the role or see how you might fit with the culture of a company or organization.

Practicing interview questions can help you gain confidence and create effective answers that might secure another interview or a job offer. In this article, we will highlight some common experience interview questions and how to answer them.

What are the two most significant achievements you had in your last job?

This interview question allows an interviewer to learn what you consider a successful accomplishment and what action you took to achieve it. 

Sample Answer; “A project I’m proud of is the refresh of our company-wide internal website. Our intranet lacked engagement opportunities and intuitiveness, so we partnered with another company to build a user-friendly, collaborative and interactive website. We prioritized must-have tools and functions, then also included features we didn’t formerly have. Ultimately, the project launched on time without exceeding budget and we saw page views go 10 times higher than on our former site.”

Tell me about your professional background

 This is a generalized question that employers often ask to get a sense of how you’ll speak about your professional background.

Example: “When I was studying for my undergraduate degree in child development, I took on my first internship role as a teacher’s assistant to a kindergarten class. I worked in that role over my senior year, and at the end of the internship, I was offered a position as a substitute teacher.

This gave me a lot of experience working with many different children and strengthened my skills in classroom control. I’m now seeking a full-time teaching position to further my knowledge of childhood education in the field.”

What experience do you have related to this role? 

When an interviewer asks what experience you have related to the role, they’re curious about two things. First off, your prior experience and the intent to use it for success in the future.

Secondly, how familiar you are with the requirements of the role you’re interviewing for.

You could say: “Most of my professional experience has led me up to this administrative secretary role. I’ve been working in the field for almost ten years now. I got my first position as an office assistant when I was 18 – a position that required a lot of communication with both co-workers and customers.

After two years, I was offered a new position as a secretary for a well-known dental group in the area. I worked in that job for nearly seven years. I eventually worked my way up to a management role.

The job description stated that you’re looking for a candidate with at least four years of experience in a secretarial position with excellent communication skills. My background satisfies these conditions, and more.”

Can you share a time you had to make a tough decision and what resulted?

A question like this can help an employer understand your decision-making skills. 

Sample answer:

“In my previous role as a store manager, I was responsible for choosing which of the key holders to promote to an assistant manager position. I had two excellent employees interested in the position who both started at the company at the same time, which meant I couldn’t use seniority to make my decision. I used a combination of sales data, had the candidates take leadership assessments and spoke to them about their goals to choose the better candidate.

I didn’t want to create any animosity on the team by making the person I didn’t hire feel unappreciated, so I spoke to the candidate we didn’t choose and discussed other positions where they could start to grow in the company and connected them with resources to grow their professional skills.”

Do you have experience in leading a team?

You might get asked about your experience leading a team even if you’re interviewing for a role that might not manage people. Your answer can often give a hiring manager insight into whether you have leadership capabilities or future career development.

Example: “At my first employer, we launched a private social media group for our department, which had nearly 2,000 participants across our nationwide offices. It was a vital communication tool that gave us a two-way dialogue. As the lead on the project, I not only oversaw the team of moderators and administrators, I also lead discussions on the social page itself, especially if responses in the comments section veered away from professionalism.”

Finally,

The main idea of discussing your work experience is to gain knowledge about your approaches to your work. This is also why it’s so important that you are able to answer these questions by demonstrating your skills and relating your answers to the job requirements.

Ready to ace your next interview? Book an interview coaching session today and convince the employer that you are the right person for the job!