Employment History Interview Question Part 1

Q1. ‘Have you had any work experience?’

This question is often asked of younger people who have just left full-time education. No employer wants to hear that you are completely inexperienced, even if you only left college a week ago. If you took part in any practical placements at college, talk about them here. You will need to come up with some kind of answer in order to reassure the interviewer that you are used to the routine of work, that you can hold down a position and that someone else has wanted to employ you in the past. Perhaps you have done a paper round; worked on voluntary projects while at school; had holiday or vacation jobs or participated in a work experience program at school or college.



If you have never done any type of work at all, do not letthis situation continue as now is the time to start. You could offer your services to a community organisation on a voluntary basis or ‘work shadow’ some friend or relative who does what you are interested in. A training course could help you pick up many transferable skills. If you are studying it may be possible to get a Saturday or evening job. Apart from providing you with a positive response to this question, and giving you added purpose and contacts, the work experience may enable you to gain a character reference from the organisation concerned. Voluntary or temporary work can also show you whether you would like a certain job or not by giving you a trial period to see what it involves.

Q2. ‘Can you tell me about your last job?’

First you need to summarise the main features of your last job so that your interviewer can quickly and easily understand what you were doing, why and how. Forget that you have already written about this in your CV or application form. Imagine this is the first time you have discussed the job. Think through in advance what aspects of the job will be impressive to this employer and stress how you have learned about these areas in particular. It is not the precise details of what you were doing in the job that are wanted, but an account
of the main skills involved and what you contributed to the organisation. Try to include skills that will be just as useful to this new job. Explain how you carried out the main tasks. Give concrete examples where possible to illustrate your points and stress how you progressed in the course of the job.

Q3. ‘What did you enjoy most in your last job?’

This question is a gift for you to show your enthusiasm for work in particular and for those elements of your last job that demonstrate your skills that are directly transferable to the new job. Think about the job on offer today and work out which elements link most directly with your last job. Talk about how you would like to take these areas further and develop your skills more fully. Show, by what you enjoyed most, what the special contribution is that you can offer the interviewer. If you are applying for a sales job, talk about the
progress you made on the sales floor in your last job and how you would be keen to learn more in this area. If you are going to be working in a team in the new job, find an example of how working with others comes easily to you. If you need to be responsible for certain areas, illustrate that you enjoyed being in charge in your last role and give some examples of how this worked for you and your last employer.

Q4. ‘What did you find most challenging in your last job?’

Now the interviewer does not want to hear a long list of things you struggled with. You are trying to give the
impression that you are capable and positive. However, you do have to provide an answer to this question so take time to think what would be a good topic to choose. It will be best if you can find an example of some difficulty that you managed to overcome. Working in teams often throws up challenges. Have you ever sorted out a dispute between other people? Did you solve problems for clients or customers that seemed
tricky to start with? Perhaps there was a lot to learn in the last job you had, that you overcame through effort and hard work? Think through a real situation that also shows you can rise to and overcome challenges when you meet them.

Q5. ‘Tell us about an area in your last job where you feel you could have performed better.’

Not many of us are perfect so you will probably be able to think of some area to discuss in your answer fairly easily. Make sure that it does not show you to be a failure though. If you had a total disaster in some area of your work that stopped production for days or ruined a big project, don’t bring these examples up unless you can make a lot of how you learned from the experience so that it will never happen again. The best answers will include some element of going one step back to end up two steps further on. If you found a
way to shorten a process, increase the efficiency of the department or better serve your clients, then these would all be good examples to give to show you as a candidate who strives to improve.

Q6. ‘Why did you leave your last position?’

This is not the time to decry either your last job, the people you worked with or the employer concerned. A candidate who appears to have difficulty in getting on with people will definitely not be offered a new position. Nobody wants to risk employing a troublemaker. You will need to provide positive reasons for moving on from your last job, either involving different work or preferably taking up a new opportunity – to study, do voluntary work, or whatever you say you have been doing since you stopped work. If there were major problems in your last (or present) job that you wish to mention, you should only talk about possible

improvements which could be made in order to sound upbeat.

If you had a terrible time in your last job and feel that nothing good happened to you there, try looking back at the experience now. With hindsight you may be able to describe some learning points for you personally, aspects of your time there that did teach you about the world of work in a positive manner, or motivating factors to leave that could seem useful to the interviewer. For instance: you felt that you wanted a role with more responsibility, greater challenges or more scope to be creative. This will help you to build the impression that you will be able to give a lot more in this new job. If you are currently employed, make sure that you do not sound desperate to escape from your job. You must provide illustrations of the way you could contribute to the position for which you have applied.

Q7. ‘What have you been doing since you left your last job?’

This is a good question which you can easily use to your advantage. If you are not working, and even if you have been unemployed for some time, you must come up with something positive that you have been doing with your time since you last worked. It is not enough to say that you have been looking for another job – that will be assumed.

The best answer will be either that you have been doing some sort of course to improve your skills or that you have been doing some voluntary work. If you know someone who runs a business, it may be possible to say that you have been doing some freelance contract work, helping out with this company.

Whatever you say will need to be backed up with details of your activities if the employer wishes to know more. If you are not doing anything with your time – you must start something immediately. Apart from being an absolute necessity for your CV and job applications, it is the perfect antidote to the depression that can come with unemployment. Volunteering to help out in a local organisation can help you develop new skills, gain experience, get training, explore your career interests, increase your contacts, build your confidence and help you to make new friends. Contact your local volunteer bureau to see what opportunities are available in your area. The government website www.direct.gov.uk gives details of local opportunities for voluntary work.

Q8. ‘What will your last employer say about you if we ask for a reference?’

You may get asked this question even if your last employer has already filled in a reference. The interviewer wants to know about two things: first how well you got on in the last job and second, how you think other people see you. Talk up about your strong points in your answer, particularly those that will be useful in the job for which you are being interviewed. You can include negative points as long as they don’t detract from the overall positive image you are trying to create. You could say that your old boss might think that you

could be quite direct in your opinions sometimes but that you know he always valued your honest feedback. Or that your old supervisor might describe you as being the life and soul of the work team but that when there was a crisis you would be the first to volunteer to help out.

Q9. ‘What would your colleagues from your last job say about you if we asked them?’

This question is being asked to see how you fit into a team. How were you seen in your last job – as the joker, the quiet one, the innovator or the thinker? Describe how your colleagues would describe you at your best on a good day. You can leave out the reasons for any tensions in the group for this answer and just highlight your strengths. If there were some people with whom you did not get on, that is quite normal and you could say: ‘Not everyone was my best friend of course but on the whole I was a valued and respected member of the team and we worked well together.’ The interviewer just wants to know that you will not be having rows every day with your new team mates.

Q10. ‘What has been your greatest achievement in your working history?’

Some hard thinking before the interview is needed in order to answer this question. The example that you choose should convey some of the principal qualities needed in the job applied for and should be explained clearly and concisely. What characteristics did you demonstrate at the time? Pick an example that has close relevance to this job to show that the skills you were using are transferable to the post on offer. A useful way to make sure you don’t ramble is to structure your answer into three key points. The first point could cover
what the achievement was, the second could explain the circumstances or the background and the third point could explain why you feel that this represents the greatest achievement in your work to date.

Q11. ‘Can you tell me about a problem that you have had to deal with?’

The point of this question, as far as the employer is concerned, is to see how you would tackle obstacles at work. An ideal answer would involve you in thinking through a difficulty and solving it with the help of other people. If you can indicate some general lessons that you learned from the experience, so much the better. Please do not volunteer an answer that makes you look as though you could not deal with the problem. Make sure you choose something that shows your role to be positive, practical and ultimately successful. If you worked with other people to solve the problem, had to communicate clearly and learned something from the experience, so much the better. It could involve dealing with difficult customers, a mix-up of resources, rescuing an organisational mess, in fact anything where your role has had a major effect for the good.

Q12. ‘What would you do if you had a problem that you could not deal with – perhaps if you were faced with a difficult customer?’

This question is being asked to assess your ability to handle customers and provide them with the best care you can. Everybody has to ask for help at times during their working life. Your answer should show that you would not give up as soon as you were faced with a problem, such as an irate or awkward customer. The employer wants to see that you would be responsible and calm in your dealings with customers who are important stakeholders in any business. Explain that you would try to find out the exact nature of the problem troubling the person, while calming him or her down, if necessary. You need to apologise quickly in cases

like this. Apologising does not mean taking all of the blame – you can feel sorry that the customer feels upset and show empathy. It can really diffuse the tension. In many cases you would be able to sort out the problem yourself, but in particularly difficult or complex cases, sometimes the issue needs to be dealt with at a higher level. 

Tell the interviewer that you are aware that if this were the case you would need all the details in order to pass them on to whoever could sort out the problem. Apologising to the customer for the delay, you would tell him or her exactly when the problem would be attended to. You would then pass on the query to your supervisor or the person responsible.

Q13. ‘Which of all your jobs have you found the most interesting, and why?’

It is easy to hear a question like this and yet forget to answer the second part of the question. You need not only to have the most interesting of your jobs to talk about but also be ready to explain clearly exactly what was so interesting about it. This question may be asked if you have had a varied employment history. A wise answer would include work similar to the job on offer to show that you will be happy and involved in your work. Try to justify your choice by giving examples of your main achievements in the time spent there, or explaining the particularly interesting aspects.

Q14. ‘What are the most satisfying and the most frustrating aspects of your present/last job?’

You may be asked this question to find out what you like best and least about your most recent position. Think carefully before you phrase your answer. The most satisfying aspects of the job should be those most closely linked to the position that you are now applying for. A long list of frustrations can make you sound like a moaner. If there was some particularly difficult aspect of the job, try to say how you helped to improve it. If at the time you did not, or could not rectify it, can you think of remedies now that might work? Make sure the frustrations are not also present in the job you are applying for now. This is important as you will not be offered a job if something that annoys you turns out to be a large part of the job on offer.