Typical Questions Employer Asked

Lists of real-life interview questions asked by prospective employers. All are quantitative in nature – questions that would test a candidate’s technical aptitude. While it’s critical to have answers to these questions, it’s equally important to have good responses to some of the softball behavioural inquiries.

Frankly, these are the questions that give you the opportunity to differentiate yourself and show your true colours. The quantitative questions are just used to weed out those who don’t have the required skillset.

Here are 25 questions that are frequently asked when companies are looking for new recruits. While clearly none of them are “difficult” in nature, you should do the work upfront and have a good story to tell.

1. Tell me a little about yourself.

2. Why did you leave your last job (or why are considering leaving)?

3. Who is the worst (best) boss/subordinate/colleague you have ever worked with?

4. In your present position, what problems have you identified that were previously overlooked?

5. What kinds of people do you find it difficult to work with?

6. Describe a situation where your judgment proved to be valuable.

7. What aspects of your previous jobs have you disliked?

8. Do you work better under pressure or with time to plan and organize?

9. What is more important – completing a job on time or doing it right?

10. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

11. What are the three most important accomplishments in your career?

12. What kinds of decisions are most difficult for you?

13. What is it about your current company that you do not particularly like or agree with?

14. How would your boss describe you?

15. What three words would you choose to best describe yourself?

16. How do you go about criticizing others?

17. What type of tasks do you feel you cannot delegate?

18. Why do you consider this to be a good opportunity?

19. What kind of relationship and atmosphere do you prefer to maintain with colleagues and subordinates?

20. How do you try to develop the weaker members of your team?

21. Describe how you allocate your time and set your priorities on a typical day.

22. Could your team carry on without you? How?

23. How do you determine if a subordinate is doing a good job?

24. Are you a better planner or implementer?

25. Describe your impact on your present company.

Updating Your Resume To Win

December is a pivotal time of year to get your resume and social media profiles updated, in sync and given to the right contacts to land your next job faster for the New Year. Whether you are simply updating your achievements, landing a new job or switching careers, it is key to capitalize on the remaining few weeks of 2013 to position yourself to thrive in 2014. Here are eight tips that you can do right now to get your profile and resume up to speed fast and ready for the New Year.

Ensure your resume summary and social media profiles correlate to strengthen your brand across mediums. To communicate your brand effectively, start with aligning the content of your resume summary with your social media profiles to reinforce what position you are targeting and how you go about doing your job. For example, if you are targeting a Senior Portfolio Analyst position, you will want to make sure this target role is written as a title in your resume summary and incorporated into your social media headlines. Having the title listed prominently not only improves your resume/profile keyword optimization, but reinforces to the reader in a split second what position you want by using the right keywords.

New Year = New Look. Give your resume an updated contemporary look to give your resume a renewed appearance and you a rejuvenated sense of confidence.  If your resume has been using the same layout from 3-5 years ago (or longer), it is time to give it an updated makeover. You can still have a conservative format, if that is what you and your industry is calling for, but conservative can still be done in a contemporary manner.

Use keyword position titles in the employment sections of your resume and profile to improve keyword optimization. Do you have a title that seems unique to your company and not a mainstream title for what you do? If so, then consider using the mainstream equivalent in the employment title headings on your resume and social media profiles to improve searchability of your documents. For example, if your title is Business Unit Manager, but you really are performing what would be called Finance Manager to the rest of the world, then consider listing your position on your resume/profile in this manner: “Business Unit Manager (Finance Manager)” to help with the keyword optimization of your target role and the clarity of what you are pursuing in the mind of the hiring manager.

List your most notable achievements for the year. Review the year and note your specific challenges, actions taken to overcome those challenges and proudest successes stemming from those experiences. Aim to have 6-8 accomplishments so you can have solid ammunition to write your resume and profile with possibilities to spare. You want to make sure you have a solid foundation of accomplishment to format your achievement-based document to help land that coveted interview.

Update your resume and profile with new training you have finished, accolades you have been awarded, and any new professional membership you now have. Demonstrate your commitment to your career and lifelong learning by updating the professional development initiatives in which you have participated. Smart employers want to hire motivated, high-caliber professionals who are serious and proactive about their own personal achievement and self-improvement.

Always be looking ahead. Write your resume and social media profiles to be forward looking document that catalogues how your accomplishments are in alignment with results desired by the prospective employer. Do not write backward-looking documents that simply state your employment history. It is important that your resume and profile show where you are going and how you will add value to the next organization you will join.

Ensure your resume and social media profile can stand alone in the event your resume is separated from your cover letter. The purpose of your cover letter is to complement your resume and to entice the reader to want to read your resume and call you for an interview.  However, your resume and profile need to be strong enough to stand on their own to convey your value, and your resume should not be dependent on a hiring manager having to read your cover letter for your resume or profile to make sense.

Be relevant. Cull your experience to focus on the last 15 years of your employment and remove or downplay any work experience prior to the 15-year mark.  Ensure you list relevant achievements for the applied role, and not everything you did just because you are proud of it. It is crucial that your resume list what is recent and relevant or you can lose the interest of employers who may see your laundry list of achievements as overwhelming and irrelevant. Getting rid of the achievements that are not pertinent to the pursued role can give new life and renewed focus to the ones you leave on your resume and profile.

Bank Is A Loan Shark In Suit

A bank loan can turn out to be more expensive than a loan from a moneylender. The profit rate for its “Islamic” personal loan can be as high as 42% per annum. The rate, like interest rates, ensures profits for the bank on a loan extended to the public.

The interest rate of this particular loan is advertised as 2% per month or 24% per annum (same as that charged by pawnbrokers) and much higher than the interest rate of 12% per annum and 18% per annum charged by licensed moneylenders for secured loans and unsecured loans respectively.

As expensive as the advertised 24% per annum is, what the borrower is actually paying is even higher – 36.8% to 41.8% per annum – depending on the loan tenure.

If it is a one-year loan, the profit rate is 41.8% per annum and if it is for five years, it drops to 36.8% per annum.

In the bank’s product disclosure sheet, it is stated that the effective profit rate of the loan is 36.82%. (The product disclosure sheet gives important information about a loan and a copy must be given to every borrower.)

The effective profit rate is the true cost of borrowing and thus the bank has to disclose this information. But at this stage, the borrower will have decided to take the loan.

This extremely high profit rate is directed at the poor as one needs only a minimum income of RM800 to sign up the loan.

For a loan of less than RM5,000, no guarantor is needed. This “Islamic” loan is most exploitative and Islamic scholars would consider it “unIslamic”.

This problem of two different profit rates or two different interest rates (one rate is advertised and the other shown in the product disclosure) for one loan is commonly found in hire-purchase and personal loans.

One thing they have in common is that the total amount of profit or interest paid by the borrower is the same.

Irrespective of whether it is an Islamic or conventional personal loan, the 24% profit rate or interest rate is actually 41.8% (one-year loan) and 36.8% (five-year loan) when the flat rate basis of calculating profit or interest is used.

For ease of understanding, let us imagine that it is a conventional personal loan.

Under the flat-rate basis, interest is calculated on the total principal. It does not take into consideration that after each repayment, a borrower owes it less each month.

When interest is charged on the original principal, the poor borrower is made to pay interest on money that he has already repaid.

Say you borrow RM10,000 at 24% per annum for 12 months. The interest is calculated at 24% of RM10,000 or RM2,400 and your monthly loan instalment is RM1,034.

After the first payment of RM1,034, you owe the bank less and interest for the following month should only be charged on the lower new balance.

The fairer method would be for the bank to charge interest on the balance that the borrower owes at the end of each month after a repayment. This is on a reducing-balance basis.

Now if the interest of 24% is calculated on the reducing balance basis, then the monthly payment will only be RM945.60. Furthermore, the total interest charged on the loan is reduced to RM1,347.15, about RM1,000 less.

Since the interest paid on the loan in our example is RM2,400, to arrive at that same amount using the reducing-balance basis, the interest rate charged will have to be 41.8% per annum.

This is the actual interest rate the borrower is paying and thus, the effective interest rate. As the higher effective interest rate may put off a borrower, it may appear in smaller print in brochures.
CAP calls upon Bank Negara to protect borrowers. It should direct banks to:

• To withdraw loans where the rate of profit or interest is unconscionable.
• Calculate all loans on the reducing balance method.
• Only advertise the effective rate of profit or effective interest rate so as not to confuse borrowers and for easy comparison. – Consumers Association of Penang, December 16, 2013.

* The writer is president of Consumers Association of Penang.

New & Fresh At General Motor

The newly-appointed female CEO of General Motors is a softly-spoken mother of two teenagers - who is not afraid of taking the company's latest models out for a high-speed spin around the test-track.

Mary Barra, who holds an MBA from Stanford University, is a GM 'lifer' who followed in her father's footsteps and joined the car company aged 18.

The 51-year-old will start her new job on January 15, taking over from CEO Dan Akerson as the first woman to fill the role. The appointment is something of a personal landmark for Mary Barra whose father Ray Makela was a GM die maker for 39 years at the Pontiac plant

Great Easter - Durian Runtuh

Great Eastern Takaful Bhd expects the takaful industry's premium contribution will grow close to RM400 million following the introduction of i-BR1M (1Malaysia People's Group Takaful Insurance).

Chief Executive Officer Zafri Ab Halim said the closing date for the i-BR1M proposal submission is Dec 13.

"If this really kicks in, our market share will be able to grow up to 20 per cent from the 10 per cent currently," he told a media briefing on the company's 2013 performance.

In Budget 2014, the government introduced the i-BR1M, which will benefit 7.9 million BR1M household recipients, who would receive protection of up to RM30,000 in the event of death or permanent disability.

Zafri said the company, which celebrated its third anniversary yesterday, aims to be profitable by end-December and be among the top three players in the local takaful business.

Nelson Mandela - Rest In Peace

AIA Agent Cheated On Client

[SINGAPORE] A former AIA insurance agent has pleaded guilty to four charges of fraud and cheating, including using forged documents to dupe an elderly businessman into buying a bogus AIA Thank You insurance policy for US$5.06 million.

Sally Low Ai Ming, 37 faced a total of 19 charges - four for cheating, 11 for fraudulent use of forged documents and four under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act.

Low, who initially claimed trial, pleaded guilty yesterday to two charges of cheating, one charge of fraudulent use of forged documents and one charge of moving crime proceeds to a bank account in Hong Kong. The remaining 15 charges were taken into consideration. Low, who has been made a bankrupt, is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec 18.

According to the statement of facts agreed between the prosecution and defence, Low, in 2002, told Indonesian Chinese businessman Ong Han Ling, 73, that he and his wife, Enny Ariandini Pramana, 72, were selected to apply for a special promotional insurance plan called the AIA Thank You policy, even though Low knew that such a product did not exist.