Ace That Job Interview

Is your dream job visiting places around the world as a flight stewardess or pilot? Daunted and overwhelmed by airline interviews?

The fact is that the airline job market has become a very competitive career battlefield nowadays. Though the airline industry has somewhat moved on from the economic crunch that toppled major carriers like Delta Airlines, United Airlines and more recently Japan Airlines, there has been a growth in discount carriers like JetAir and Virgin Blue while regional operators, charter and cargo carriers also increased their flight coverage. This upsurge has opened new job positions in the airline industry.

KNOW

First things first, you have to get a sense on what you want to do and where you are going. Employee interview questions on your job expectations and choice of airline carrier will gauge your interest for the job and the company itself. Let’s face it, an airline job is not a career but a lifestyle that means you have to give up a lot of social life and weekends. Think it over if working in the airline industry is good for you.

Know everything about the airline you are interested in working with. So whether if it is chartered or scheduled, short haul or long haul, domestic or regional, you should know that airline carriers operate differently. Do some research about the company and know the officials, airplanes being used, corporate culture, work environment and job description.

UNDERSTAND

Most employee interview questions vary according to company, airline operation and job position you applied for but standard interview questions generally focus on practical knowledge. In this case, you will be asked on how you are going to respond in real-world job situations like how you as a pilot handle an emergency landing or how you as a flight attendant handle potential security threats during flights.

Try looking for interview gouge websites that offer standard interview questions from different airlines. These interview gouge sites provide you an insider look from people who post their interview experiences. It is a very big help if you really want to understand how the interview process works and employer interview questions that are being asked. Take note, some airline interviews are more in-depth than a typical interview.

PREPARE

Preparation is a crucial ingredient to your interview success. However, some important issues are rarely discussed because from time to time there are situations during the interview process that you may not expect. Just bear in mind that the most important thing is the way you handle the interview rather than the way you answer the questions.

Job interview coaching is a better way of preparing for airline interviews as interview coaches will provide you needed guidance in a simulated interview setting. Interview questions coaching will also help boost your confidence. And being a prepared and confident interviewee will make you the job candidate that employers want to hire.

Flightdeck Consulting, a leading provider of job interview coaching and interview consulting, has helped clients worldwide achieve the job of their dreams.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/interviews-articles/fly-high-the-secret-to-airline-interviews-1785969.html

This is one of the most popular question interviewers love to ask in order to break the ice. Every candidate perceived this question differently and a mixed bag of answers can be given totally not related to the job description. Why do you think the interviewer ask this question? What do you think they expect for an answer?

 Here is my two cents.  If a movie you have been dying to watch is due out soon, would you not like to see the trailer before you look at it? Definitely a must. So “Tell me about yourself” is basically a “professional” trailer of yourself to the interviewer. He or she wants to see a short clip of your best highlights before the entire interview plays out.

 How can I make a good example of my professional self? This is easy to do just follow my lead. Let us assume that the job you are being interviewed for is a Call Center Manager for Alarm Response and you have 4 years similar experience and you are asked this dreaded question,

 ”Tell me about yourself.”

Action!

 Clip #1 - Your Role

 My career begun at Company A as an Alarm Response Operator to which my role was to respond to burglar and other low priority alarms I was timed on each call and the company expectation was to process all calls under the 3 minutes. That involves calling the property, and if no answers send the police then work your way down the contact list to notify someone of what action you took.”

 Clip#2 - Accomplishment and Promotion

 Not more than eight months of working in this department, 98% of all my calls were under 3 minutes which impressed my boss and I was promoted to an Emergency Dispatcher handling calls only for hold ups, fire and medical emergencies.”

 Clip#3 - More promotion

 For approximately 2 years I worked in the Emergency Response Unit maintaining my average of 94% and higher in the statistics for timely response under 3 minutes. Until one warm summer afternoon I got a fire alarm blip on my screen and under a minute dispatched the fire department. The fire department called back to inform us that our quick response saved the lives of an elderly couple. The company used this example in their newsletters and advertisements and made record sales that year. Shortly after I was offered a position as a Supervisor to which I accepted.”

 Clip#4 - More Accomplishment.

 ”During the second month in this role, with a team of 40 Customer Care Representative I was able to coach, motivate and together we were able to drive the statistics of all calls from 84% under 3 minutes to 94% under 3 minutes. This was the first time the call center was able to achieve this goal of over 90% average. This high percentage score was consecutively repeated month after month”

 Clip#5  Make the Sale – Sell

“And this brings me to this opportunity to which I learnt from the job description that ABC Company is looking to improve the response times in their Call Center. I bring to the table all my professional skills and experiences to help your Call Center achieve the same results or better.”

 Cut!

 Well this is the secret how to effectively handle the “Tell me about yourself” speech ladies and gentlemen. This how you jump start your interview for job and be ahead of your competitors, spend some time and write your own speech using this very technique and rehearse it till you know it by heart the interviewer will be impressed. It should take no more than 3 minutes.

Click Here Now for Instant Access to over 100 interview questions and answers or check out more answers for Why should I hire you? and Why do you want to work for us? and much more…. learn how to crack your next interview and get your dream job.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/interviews-articles/top-hr-question-answered-tell-me-about-yourself-1787887.html

I was recently notified that I was invited to interview with Microsoft, having sent in my resume a couple weeks back.

The interview was for one of three internship positions they are offering:
- Program Manger (PM)
- Software Development Engineer (SDE)
- Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)

Being geared toward entrepreneurial activities, I decided that the Program Manger position was the best fit for me. On the Microsoft website they described the Program Manger:

Program Manager (PM)
“As a Program Manager intern, you’ll get to help drive the technical vision, design and implementation of next-generation software solutions. You’ll transform the product vision into elegant designs that will ultimately turn into products used by Microsoft customers. The PM intern helps manage feature sets throughout the product lifecycle, and you’ll have the chance to see your design through to completion. You’ll also work directly with other key team members including Software Development Engineers and Software Development Engineers in Test. Program Managers are advocates for end-users, so your passion for anticipating customer needs and creating outside-the-box solutions for them will really help you shine in this role.”

Basically the Program Manager deals more with interacting with people. Whether that be the customer to get feedback on what is expected, or the software development engineers to elaborate on what code needs to be written, or the marketing team to see if a particular feature is even worth implementing. I decided to go with this rather than the Software Developer Engineer role. I’m much more comfortable interacting with others and developing a overall design and seeing a product/service implemented. The SDE is undoubtedly more geared towards writing code for various specifications.

It helps that I have a sound understanding of writing code and developing applications that allows me to perform in a role  such as this. I have the technical know how to design the application while taking into consideration what the software developers would ultimately be coding.

So I sent  my response back in, along with an updated version of my resume. They replied  back a couple days later with a time and date for my interview.

The Interview:

They stated to dress casually, as that’s how most Microsoft employees dressed. So instead of suiting up in my jacket and tie, I went with a more casual button up and jeans. As I walked up to my interview location, I noticed a good amount of people were in suits (interviewing with other companies), but my recruiter greeted me sporting a casual attire as well, so all was good.

I sat down with the nice recruiter and we made small talk about how bad parking was, and then we began the interview.

She started off asking why I was going after the Program Manager position. I gave a response similar to what I talked about above in choosing to go for Program Manager. Citing my entrepreneurial nature and experience in designing applications.

She asked a couple more questions about projects I have worked on in the past, examples of how I had worked with a team. I’ve had a lot of technical experience designing software and presenting the finished product to people, so I was able to cite a lot of examples with that. I talked a bit about some of the business ventures I have done, such as designing websites for small businesses and individuals. Also  I talked about the latest SMS service business I have been working on, and how I am going about developing and implementing it.

After the more general questions were asked she tasked me with a few exercises. The first was to design a kiosk that allowed people to create custom wristwatches. I suppose she was testing my ability to design a product/service and how to go about implementing it. So on paper I began plotting out a kiosk centered around creating your own custom wristwatch. While doing this I was speaking aloud to let my interviewer in on my mindset.

The second task involved a recruiting question, wherein I was hypothetically tasked to contact a candidate for interview within the next 10 minutes, but his resume did not supply a phone number. I started listing out all the options of possibly contacting him, like emailing, looking online for any websites that listed a number, contacting his university, or previous employers for a number. I’m guessing this was aimed at seeing how well I could solve a problem, and which routes I would exhaust in trying to achieve my goal.

After this, she asked some questions as to which Microsoft products I was interested in working with. To which I answered about my interests in mobile and web products. She  also asked what was the most innovative software application I had been using lately. Here I talked about how Google Wave was a new and fresh application that I had been using recently, mainly for its collaborative nature. We spoke about how Microsoft would be responding with a competitor to Wave, and then presented me with the question of how I would I go about improving it. For this I spoke about how a collaborative environment could be supplemented by a video conferencing interface so  that you could talk to your peers while working together on a project.

The interview ended with a couple questions I had, such as what a typical day for a PM intern was like, and what projects interns had worked on in the previously. Her answers further confirmed my interest in this particular role as it involved seeing a specific feature through its design and development. She also stated that some interns were given a chance to pitch their ideas for features, which was of particular interest to me.

Thoughts:

There weren’t any actual coding problems given in this interview as I thought, instead it was more focused on a design and management point of view. Still, there were quite a bit of technical related questions posed, and I’m sure further interviews will incorporate programming specific questions.

As far as things I missed, I didn’t get a chance to talk about experiences from my Mountain Dew Brand Rep role. I would have liked to highlight my ability in working with people, setting up events, and designing a strategy around what people were likely to respond best to.

Overall I thought the interview went well, I had the opportunity to elaborate on my skills and experience, as well as respond thoroughly to the questions and tasks given to me.

Now all that is left is to wait and see if I stood out enough to get a follow-up interview.

By Nick Carson - www.carsoncritique.com

Student at the University of Florida
- Aspiring Entrepreneur & Computer/Tech Hobbyist

Clubs:
Entrepreneurship Club (Officer)
Warrington Times (Columnist)
- Tech Column - Warrington Times

Business Projects:
TextRooms - A custom SMS service coming soon…

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/interviews-articles/a-look-at-interviewing-with-microsoft-1768142.html