MBA HR interview questions and answers

How to Deal with MBA HR interview questions and answers?

In this blog top likely asked MBA HR interview questions and it's most effective answers are discussed.

Followings are Top MBA HR interview questions

What Do You Do to Be More Effective?

When an interviewer asks you this question, they want to see if you are motivated to make improvements to your skills. Interviewers want candidates who look to learn more and find more ways to be better at their job. 

We will look at a good answer to this question for the position of a creative director of a flower shop. Some of the responsibilities for this position could be designing floral displays, meeting with clients, and training staff on floral designs:

 “I love finding ways where I can express my creativity and share ideas. I like to look through Daily Motion, Vimeo, and YouTube each day to find new floral arrangement designs. I also keep up with several bloggers, and I am now producing my own videos that teach others how to arrange flowers. You can see my videos on YouTube. Next, I would like to have a team that I can train to do floral designs so that we can always have new ideas to help delight our customers.” 

This answer lets the interviewer know that you love the work you are applying for so much that you are constantly looking for new ways to do your job better. 

Tell Me about a Time You Demonstrated Great Leadership

 When your interviewer asks you to tell them when you demonstrated great leadership, they are interested in hearing that you can get people to follow you.

 This skill involves having the ability to understand the things that motivate others and teaches them to trust you. It also includes being able to communicate well in ways that make other people want to follow you. 

The story that you come up with for this one, and it should be a true story, not fiction, can be modified with some variations for any of the following: 

Tell me about a time you demonstrated: 

• Leadership 
• Teamwork 
• Persuasion 

We will look at a sample answer for the position of a shift manager at a restaurant. Some of the responsibilities for the job could include resolving customer issues, assigning tasks, and leading the operations of the restaurant when the manager is not present: 

“While a cashier at Top Sirloin, two of the employees started screaming at each other. There was not a manager around at the time, so I decided to step in. I immediately told them to follow me to the back office so that they would not upset the customers. Since I had gotten along with both of them, they followed. I was able to get them to calm down and tell me what was going on. I persuaded them to be patient, and wait for the other to tell their side. It all turned out to be a big misunderstanding as they had each thought that the other had intentionally bumped into the other. Once they realized it was just an accident because they were both trying to do the same thing, they calmed down and agreed to get back to their respective tasks. Once the manager came back in, I told them about what happened and that I had helped to resolve the issue. The positive thing is that they both learned to trust one another. They work well together and are now good friends. This incident got me a promotion to restaurant shift manager.” 

This answer shows that an important part of being a leader is listening to others. An interviewer likes to hear that you can motivate others by listening to what has happened and then helping them come to a mutual solution that helps them and the company. 

We are going to take a quick look at a bad way to answer this question. We will stick with the position of shift manager:

 “Since Primary school, I have been a great basketball player. While in high school, I led my team in rebounds and points. I was also a leader on a Boy Scouts hike. We hiked to a beautiful national park, and I was the fastest. In fact, the other kids had a hard time keeping up with me. I also led my debate team to the most wins. I am extremely competitive, so I worked hard to beat my other team members. If I get hired, I will bring this competitive spirit. I will look for ways to beat my coworkers at any goal that is set.” 

First off, they are rambling with several examples that do not relate to the position. The best answer would be one that focuses on how they can motivate other people. 

Also, they do not have a good grasp of what leadership means. Instead, they like to be a better team member than others. They don’t focus on how to build a team to achieve a goal; they try to do it all on their own. This does not show that they would be a great team leader.

Describe Where You Demonstrated Great Creativity

 For any position that would require out-of-the-box thinking, the interviewer is interested in hearing examples of how you have come up with creative solutions to interesting problems. They want an example of how you can create ideas that nobody else has thought of, and how you delivered this idea. 

We will look at a sample answer for the position of a public relations manager. Some of the responsibilities could be leading social media efforts, writing press releases, and developing public relations strategies:

 “When I first started work at the Northeastern University’s Theatre as their PR Coordinator, the attendance was low. I was supposed to increase attendance to the plays. I took a look at other entertainment businesses to see who did the best at marketing. I found that movies generated more awareness because of their trailers, so I thought the theatre could use this. I talked a friend, who was majoring in visual arts, into helping to create a trailer for one of the plays as a project for her class. I then ran the trailer on the social media networks for the campus. The trailer ended up getting over 2,500 views, and the attendance went up 50 percent. We surveyed the attendees, and over 65 percent said that they first heard about the play from our trailer.” 

If you work in a creative field, but you do not have any examples that show this type of creativity, take some time to look through video sites. Those sites will provide you with many different creative ideas. For example, with some research, you can learn how to use videos to promote just about anything. The interviewer would be impressed if you let them know that you have posted tutorials for topics that you are interested in, which could easily be helping to drive awareness to charitable organizations to help tutor children.

Tell Me about a Time When You Demonstrated Good Collaboration

 The majority of jobs are going to require you to work well with other people, so an interviewer is probably going to want to know of a time when you demonstrated this skill. There are different words they can use for collaboration questions. These include: 

• Ability to work with difficult people 
• Interpersonal skills 
• Collaboration 

We will look at an answer to the position of a computer programmer. Some of the responsibilities could include integrated work with coding from different programmers and writing code applications: 

“I worked at Pixelcon Gaming, and we were working on a new video game. I was supposed to write code for the vehicles in the game. Halfway through the project, the project manager and creative director could not pick an ending. I was in good standing with them both, so I talked them into having a war room session with me. During our session, I led a brainstorming exercise so that they could share their ideas. We were able to come up with several different ideas that hadn’t been considered, and one of them turned out to be the option that we went with. In the end, we were able to agree on the best solution and completed the project on time. That game is now a best seller.” 

When it comes to collaboration questions, the interviewer is looking to see that you can get others to work together towards a common goal. They want to know that you can listen to several points of view and then discover the common ground. 

Tell Me about a Time Where You Demonstrated Great Analytical Skills 

If the job you are looking to get requires analytical skills, the interviewer is going to want to you know how well you can use data to make decisions. There are a few ways that this question can be worded. They include: 

• An ability to use data to make a decision 
• An ability to think strategically 
• An ability to solve complex issues 
• Analytical skills 

We will look at an example answer for the position of an innovation director for a sporting goods store. Some of the responsibilities would be determining market potential and identifying new product lines: 

“I worked at Top Shot Sporting Goods as an innovation manager. I was required to assess and identify business opportunities for a new line of sports equipment. While attending my son’s martial arts tournament, I saw hundreds of children wearing sparring gear, so I started to look into this as a new product line. During my research, I found out that more than four million Americans participate in some type of martial arts. These people spend, on average, $200 annually on equipment. That is about $800 million in retail opportunities. With the average markup being 50 percent, the wholesale opportunity is about $400 million. This information helped me to persuade the executive team to approve a test for a line of martial arts gear. We ended up creating a new product line that has been delivering more than four million dollars in sales each year. With just a one percent market share, they have more room to grow.” 

When it comes to analytical questions, the interviewer wants to see that you can discover relevant data and use that data to make the best decisions. They want to see that you can conduct research and make realistic assumptions when needed. 

Your Best and Your Worst

 These are the questions that everybody hates to get. While everybody knows, deep down, what their strengths and weaknesses are, we all seem to struggle with answers to questions about them. You can guarantee that there is going to be a question from this section asked in your interview. If not, it is a miracle.

 The interviewer is looking to see: one, if you can be honest, and two, if you can do the job they need you to do. Nobody truly wants to share about their downfalls, but you don’t have to focus on the negatives of them. They can be learning experiences, and that is how you should answer these types of questions.

 When presented with a question that seems to have a negative answer, you should answer it in a way that puts a positive spin on it. When you get asked a question that has a positive answer, make sure you keep yourself humble and do not come off as cocky. A person who cannot see the good in a bad situation or somebody who thinks too highly of themselves is not somebody that the company is likely to hire. 

Tell Me about a Time Where You Regretted a Decision You Made 

The interviewer could ask you about a decision that you regret to see if you can learn from the mistakes you make. These types of questions give you the chance to show your ability to adapt to changing environments and use your experiences to become more efficient. 

With these questions, provide them with an answer that highlights a key skill that comes from the job description. This will make sure that your interviewer will see that you learned from past experiences and that the odds of you making the same mistake are slim if you are to get hired. 

We will look at an answer to this question for the position of a strategy director. Some of the responsibilities for this job could be developing recommendations for business models, managing teams of consultants, and leading strategic projects: 

“I worked as a data analyst and strategy manager at HDFC Bank. I was assigned to write a project brief to prep our consulting company for a new project. The project required creating a new strategy for improving customer satisfaction. The brief I wrote used a template that the bank had used in the past for consulting projects. The consulting firm assigned their own teams of finance experts, but they did not have anybody on their team that had customer research experience. This meant that their initial recommendations involved cost-cutting measures, but they didn’t address the main objective, which was to help satisfy customers. I realized that there needed to be a new approach, so I spoke with their project leader. I asked him to work with me to come up with a new brief so that I could find the skills they needed for the assignment. Because I saw the mistake early on, I helped the consulting firm find a person with the expertise required for the project. I also needed to revise the company’s brief to include ‘required skills’ so that we would not have this problem in the future. The financial team estimated that the new brief would help save the bank around $100,000 each year in consulting fees since the projects would be staffed with people with the skills required. From this, I learned that every project is unique, and I have to make sure to evaluate the scope of each project so that team members with the right skills will handle the needs of the project.” 

This is a great answer because the candidate has shown that they learned something from a mistake and discovered a way to make sure it did not happen again. When you prepare for a question like this, make sure you find an example that shows how you can improve the company once they hire you. 

This will let the interviewer see that you are the best choice because you do not just make a mistake and move on; you learn and then help others to avoid this same mistake.