The most popular interview questions in the world are now more markedly focused on customer service, according to global organisations using A&DC’s online Competency Based Interviewing (CBI) tool, CBI-Smart. Never before have three of the top 5 questions chosen by employers to ask potential employees focused on best possible service, exceeding customer expectations and dealing with a dissatisfied customer.
In May 2009 the interview question most likely to be asked was, Tell me about a time when you have taken action to ensure that you are providing the best possible service to customers. For the first time ever this exact same question has stayed at the top of the list of most popular question. The top five questions are listed below (source CBI-Smart database May 2009 – Jan 2010):
- Tell me about a time when you have taken action to ensure that you are providing the best possible service to customers.
- Tell me about a time recently where you have gone out of your way to ensure that you have exceeded customer expectations.
- Please give an example when you have been a valued team member on a successful team.
- Tell me about a time when you have had to adapt your style or approach due to a change in the situation or circumstance, in order to achieve a desired end result.
- Please tell me about a time when you had to deal with a problem issue to do with a dissatisfied client or stakeholder.
Rory Fidgeon, Principal Consultant of Assessment & Development Consultants, explains, The results demonstrate a consistency of focus around customer service over the last 8 months, and reflect the vital continuing requirement for most organisations to keep current customers and win over new ones if they are to survive such challenging economic times”.
Whilst there has been some jostling for position amongst the most popular questions again the trends within the top 5 seem reasonably consistent especially amongst the larger organisations with 100,000+ employees. “As well as reacting to the prevailing economic conditions, I think a lot of our larger employers now feel they have hit upon the right formula in terms of the questions they are asking at interview. This has meant that they are sticking with the ones they feel most comfortable with and that appear to generate the most insightful responses.
“As we provide feedback to companies informing them which questions predict high performance within their organisations it is inevitable that they will start to have their own set of favourites, but it is more important that we can provide hard statistical evidence that such questions are indeed predicting improved performance.”
Previous trends during 2007/8/9 have shown that ‘stress tolerance’ was initially the most popular topic area to investigate. Next ‘planning and organising’ took over as the most asked about competency. However throughout all of 2009 customer service has firmly held on to the top spot, and has been joined at number two and number five by additional questions looking at this area.
Overall since data collection began back in 2007 the following 10 competency areas have been the most popular:
- Customer Service
- Planning and Organising
- Teamwork
- Openness to change
- Leadership
- Problem Analysis
- Persuasive oral communication
- Flexibility
- Judgement
- Drive
The Top 10 roles that these questions were used to assess for included positions like, project manager, line manager, sales manager, production manager, administrator, graduate, PA and operations manager.
