Most Commonly Asked Stress Interview Questions and Answers

Most Commonly Asked Stress Interview Questions and Answers

Before we begin talking about Commonly Asked Stress Interview Questions and Answers, you must know (what a stress interview is and how to deal with it.) After you have briefed yourself about stress interviews from that article, the following Interview Questions and Answers will sound more relevant and you will be able to understand them better.



Most Commonly Asked Stress Interview Questions and Answers



Contrary to the title of the article, there is actually no fixed set of questions which may be asked in a Stress Interview, but we can broadly categorize them into types. Read on to know the broad types of stress questions or behavior you might be put through.


  • The Silent/Invisible Man Treatment: To unnerve you, the interviewer might resort to tactics in which in which he ignores you when you enter the room. It could be in the form of something as trivial as not asking you to take a seat or something downright rude like using his cell phone or pretending to do something else. In such a scenario, you might either tend to shout or keep silent too long. Neither is a good strategy. You should ideally wait for around a minute before you request the interviewer to perhaps set up another appointment for you when he would be more available.


  • Personal and Irrelevant Questions: The interviewer might ask you intruding questions about your personal life or choices and may even make snide remarks about them. Politely steer the conversation away from the topic or you may even firmly let the interviewer know that your personal life does not affect your professional conduct. There might even be questions where they ask you to describe an embarrassing situation or some bad moments of your life. Use it as an opportunity to show that you derive positive lessons from even the most embarrassing situations.


  • Unexpected Tasks: There might be times when you feel an interviewer has given you an impossible task to do, for instance, the much talked about ‘jump from the window’ task. At such a time, keep a calm head and ask yourself if there is hidden meaning in the statement made or if there is a loophole which you are supposed to find or if you are simply assuming something which has not been said. As per the above-mentioned example, the interviewee simply climbed onto the window and jumped back into the room! This worked since the statement did not say jump ‘outside’.


  • Demeaning questions about your Previous Marks/Jobs/Experiences: Common questions about why you scored really low on a subject or in a semester or why you left your old job can be countered with proper justifications about the same. The interviewer will try to prove you incompetent in your eyes but you must not lose self-confidence and should justify your abilities well.


  • Questions to incite negative or flattering remarks from you: You might be faced with questions where you are asked to rate yourself or your college or your last job or perhaps the interviewer himself. Do not be too critical not too flattering. Balance your opinion and give a sensible rating or answer.


  • Moral Dilemma Questions: You might be put in a fix by questions where you might need to be a whistle-blower or take a stand against another friend or co-worker who is involved in a wrong deed. The best approach is to assess the seriousness of the situation presented and then analyze the decision. If the friend/co-worker is involved in something grave, you must take a stand otherwise if it is an easily rectifiable situation, you might have the opportunity to take a win-win stand by proposing an alternative solution to the issue.



  • Introspection Questions: These questions are the simplest if you know yourself well and the toughest if you don’t. You might be asked to give reasons as to why the company should ‘not’ hire you. Here, you need to display your weaknesses as strengths by telling them how you have worked on your weaknesses and converted them into strengths. You may also disguise your strengths as weaknesses, for instance, if you want to say you are a team player, you could say that you find it very difficult to work alone and are able to give your best only when you have a team.


  • Sales Tasks: You might be put in a stress environment where the interviewer pretends to be a rude customer to whom you are trying to sell something. He might give counters to everything you say but you need to keep trying and most importantly, try to think out-of-the-box.

 

Here are a few sample interview questions which might turn out to be Stress interview questions at times:


1) Do you think you will be successful in life?

2) How do you think this interview is going so far?

3) Was there a time when you have planned something well, but failed to execute it? If so, then what do you think was the reason for your failure?

4) I’m an Apple iPhone user. Convince me to buy an old Nokia phone.

5) How will you deal with a co-worker who has been constantly taking credit for your work?

6) Imagine a situation where you will have to work with a manager who you absolutely dislike. In that case, how will you manage to work/impress the manager?

7) What makes you think you a good fit for this role?

8) I personally feel that the previous candidate had better skills than you do. Do have anything to say about this?

Overall, no matter how many Q&A you read, every situation in a stress interview is different and you need to be on your toes and be a quick thinker to deal with it. Nonetheless, we hope our short compilation of Commonly Asked Stress Interview Questions and Answers was helpful.


All the best for your interviews!



Most Commonly Asked Stress Interview Questions and Answers