Software Interview Questions

Current Position & Our Company

Current Position

• Tell me about your current position.
  • What would you do to improve?
  • What would you change about your current position?
• Why are you looking for a new position?

What do you know about” Our Company”

• Tell me what you know about” Our Company”
  • What made you apply at” Our Company”?
  • Why would you like to work here?

Core Competencies

Organizational Awareness

• Give an example of a time when you failed to address an issue at the right level in your organization.
  • How did you realize you’d made a mistake?
  • How did you handle the situation?
• Tell me about a recent business problem you solved.
  • How did you use knowledge of the organization’s structure, organization culture, etc. to solve the problem?

Customer Focus

• There aren’t enough hours in the day to ensure that every customer is totally satisfied. Give me an example of a situation where you weren’t able to meet the client’s needs due to time constraints.
  • What challenge did you face?
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Strategic Leadership and Execution

• Tell me about a time you resisted making a quick decision to gather more information.
  • Why did you decide to wait?
  • What did you do to gather information?
  • Was waiting the right decision?
  • What was the outcome?

Planning & Results Orientation

• Tell me about a time when you had to juggle project tasks and ad hoc requests (or fire fighting).
  • What challenges did you face?
  • How did you go about it?
  • What was the outcome?
• Tell me about a project that you planned.
  • What was the project?
  • How did you break down the project into smaller tasks?
  • What tools/techniques do you use to monitor the progress of projects/tasks you assigned?
  • What was the outcome?
• Tell me about a time when you noticed that another employee did a great job.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Relationship Building

• Tell me about a time when you noticed that another employee did a great job.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Teamwork & Collaboration

• Tell me about a time when you faced difficulty in gaining the agreement from the members of a meeting you were leading.
  • Which methods worked and which ones didn’t?
    What happened?
• Can you give me an example where you have worked with 3rd party contract developers in different countries and how did you help them integrate into working well with your team?
  • How did you do this?
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
• Can you give me an example of a time when you required the involvement of all your team members to make a critical decision/action.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What did you learn?
• Can you give me an example where you have helped build out a new development team with people that may have never worked together before?
  • How did you approach it?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What would you change?
• Give me an example of a time when you had to counsel your team members into a compromise.
  • How did you approach it?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What would you change?
• Tell me about a situation where you involved other team members/coworkers to help solve an internal/external customer’s problem.
  • What was the problem?
  • How did involving them help solve the problem?
  • What was the outcome?

• Give me an example of a time when you needed a team member’s cooperation to complete a task/project, but the team member was being uncooperative.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What did you learn?
• Can you describe a time when someone else changed your perspective on an initiative or idea you were working on?
  • What was the idea or Initiative?
  • What made you change your mind?
  • What was the outcome?

Problem Solving and Decision Making

• Tell me about the most difficult decision you’ve ever had to make at work.
  • How did you collect the information you needed?
  • What did you do with the information?
  • What was the outcome?

Communication

• Tell me about a time when you found it challenging to communicate your ideas to a manager.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
• Tell me about a time when you were able to effectively communication and inspire others to support your organization’s vision and values.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
• Give me an example of a time when you had the responsibility of helping others understand a new approach to solving problems.
  • What message were you trying to convey?
  • What challenges did you face?
  • What approach did you use?
  • What was the outcome?
• Give me an example of a time when you had the responsibility of helping others understand a new approach to solving problems.
  • What message were you trying to convey?
  • What challenges did you face?
• Describe a time when listening skills proved crucial to an outcome.
  • What challenges did you face?
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Dynamic Learning Mindset

• Can you give an example of a time you embraced failure as a learning opportunity?
  • How did you respond to this feedback?
  • What was the outcome?
• Give me an example of sources of information you used in a former position to stay informed about developments in your field.
  • Tell me about a situation in which you used these sources.
  • What were the challenges?

Negotiations

• Describe a time when you had to collect relevant information in order to clarify issues and resolve a conflict.
  • What approaches did you use?
  • How well did it work?

Managing Through Change & Uncertainty

• Tell me about a time when you helped a coworker deal with a change.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
  • How did the coworker react to the change?
  • What would you change?
• Tell me about a time you had to meet a scheduled deadline while your work was being continually disrupted.
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What went well?
  • What would you change?

Leadership Competencies

Strategic Leadership and Execution

• Tell me about a time you resisted making a quick decision to gather more information.
  • Why did you decide to wait?
  • What did you do to gather information?
  • Was waiting the right decision?
  • What was the outcome?

People Leadership

• Tell me about a time when you had to coach a direct report to develop a new skill or complete a difficult task.
  • What was the skill or the task? What did you do? How did you track the person’s progress? What was the outcome?

People Leadership

• Describe a time you had to modify work procedures to align with new culture or values.
  • What did you do? Why was the old way? What was the biggest resistance to the change? What was the outcome?

Risk Management

• Tell me about the risks you expected when you accepted your last position.
  • Did the actual risks match your expectations? What did you learn from the experience?

IT Competencies

Project Management

• Tell me about the most complex IT project you have managed.
  • How did you approach the project?
  • What steps did you take to assess risk?
  • What tools did you use to manage the project?
  • What did you do to ensure the success and quality of the project?
  • What challenges did you encounter?
  • How did you overcome those challenges?

Requirements Gathering

• Tell me about a time when you translated business needs into IT requirements.
  • What did you do? Why?
  • What was the outcome?
  • What did you learn?

Business Analysis

• Describe a time you were able to use technology to help solve a business problem or achieve a business objective.
  • What did you do?
  • How did you identify the problem or objective?
  • What was the outcome

Documentation & Measurement

• Describe a time when you tracked or documented systems issues, changes, or requirements.
  • How did you approach the task?
  • What was the outcome?

Troubleshooting and Support

• Tell me about an IT outage you responded to.
  • What challenge did you face?
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Policy & Compliance

• Tell me about a time you helped others to understand technical requirements, department policy or compliance issues.
  • What was the situation?
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Security & Data Protection

• Tell me about a time when you used your knowledge of security to improve application, system or process.
  • What did you do?
  • Why?
  • What was the outcome?

Programming

• Tell me about the most complex programming you’ve done.
  • What did you do?
  • Why?
  • What was the outcome?
• Describe a project you are proud of that used [The Tech Stack You Know].
  • How long did the project take?
  • How many programmers worked on it?
  • What were the challenges?
• Tell me about a time you worked with a programming team and had issues with errors in the application.
  • How did you identify the root cause(s)?
  • What were the challenges?
  • How did you resolve the issue(s)?
  • What was the outcome?

Testing & Quality Assurance (QA)

• Tell me about a time when you applied testing or QA techniques to a project or problem.
  • What did you do?
  • Why?
  • What was the outcome?

Vendor Selection & Management

• Tell me about a time you worked with a vendor to resolve a technical issue or challenge.
  • What instigated the discussions?
  • What did you do?
  • What was the outcome?

Data Analysis

• Describe a time you had to identify a set of metrics to track the success of an initiative.
  • What did you do?
  • What metrics did you consider and disregard?
  • Why?