Ask, Seek, Knock!: How To Use Powerful Questions In Your Quest For Success

Look for the Kindle MatchBook icon on print and Kindle book detail pages of qualifying books. Print edition must be purchased new and sold by Amazon. Gifting of the Kindle edition at the Kindle MatchBook price is not available.

Product details

Learn more about Kindle MatchBook. Start reading Ask, Seek, Knock! Don't have a Kindle? Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers.

• .
• Special offers and product promotions.
• Fast, simple, effective recruitment;
• After the Storm.
• Table of contents?
• 2. Seeking.
• Editorial Reviews.

Write a customer review. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Learn more about Amazon Prime. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime.

Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Explore the Home Gift Guide. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. How to use this guide to common competency-based interview questions.

Start your preparation for the most common competency-based interview questions by reading our How to handle competency-based interview questions guide. This guide makes multiple references to the STAR interview technique.

The technique calls for you to structure your answers using four components: Learn how to use the STAR technique in the aforementioned How to handle competency-based interview questions guide. The first 25 competencies are fundamental to every good employee. Practically, all of us would benefit from possessing them, and, in turn, every employer seeks them in their candidates.

The remaining five are role-specific competencies, and relate to a particular discipline or level of seniority:. After all, you are unique, and your experiences and skills are, too. Instead, we help you perfect your own answers to these competency questions, so you can show off your best self to your interviewer or interviewers. Employers who ask you questions about managing a quality service competency are looking for people who work well in teams, inspire others and deliver every time.

Do the same for any direct competitors. You might want to reference a time where you really impressed a customer or a stakeholder and describe the exact lengths you went to to make them happy. Mention specific actions you took and explain why you took your decisions. Think about your communication style, says John Lees, author of Knockout Interview. Do you prefer to communicate verbally or in writing? Whatever your normal style, indicate flexibility in your approach, depending on the situation, and show how you do it well. Jon Gregory, career coach and founder of Win-That-Job. Your answer could focus on how you solved a problem, resolved conflict or motivated an employee through your communication skills.

Employers want people who motivate teams to deliver the best, high quality outcomes on time. You need to show the employer that you have good self-awareness skills, as well as project and time-management abilities.

Self-awareness is a valuable trait for employees of almost all industries. Employers are looking for people who meet deadlines, and track their own progress against milestones or targets. To show self-awareness, outline your weaknesses when producing something fast, and then talk about how you manage and overcome them.

Choose a situation where the changes you made or the action you took turned something negative into a positive. Margaret Buj, author of Land That Job , says: Or, perhaps you were awarded Employee of the Year for your excellent and speedy customer service. Employers want people who can keep a clear head and use sound judgement based on solid knowledge when making decisions or offering advice.

To really ace this answer, you must focus on, and clearly present, examples of making effective decisions at work. Describe the resulting benefits or successes of your chosen decisions, says Jon Gregory, career coach. Employers are looking for people who work in a professional way with all kinds of people, and proactively build positive relationships to achieve great results. Employers value candidates who build positive, professional and trusting relationships with people across an organisation and outside it.

Here are some examples of cooperation:. For related competencies, check out 6. Leading and communicating and John Lees, author of Knockout Interview , says: Give the background quickly. Use an example of a productive, hard working team to explain how you worked collaboratively to make an impact. Statistics help to demonstrate the value of your cooperation skills. For example, you could say: Employers are desperate for strong leaders — that is people who lead others with conviction, passion and clarity, and engage them in a vision of the future.

So, employers will be looking for people with excellent leadership and communication skills. Employers seek out people who are proactive in finding solutions to problems, says Andrew Fennell, founder of StandOut CV. Questions on leading and communicating often come up in interviews for management roles, so check out our guides on 2. Communication skills and Jon Gregory, career coach, says: Employers want managers who get the best out of the people they lead, whether they be direct reports, coworkers or contractors. So, you need to show an openness to learning and demonstrate how well you nurture and manage talent to build a learning and knowledge culture.

This competency is about being able to sensitively navigate internal communications. Your best reply to this is a competency story with a strong focus on personal learning.

One that shows you continually push yourself, and others, to build skills and knowledge. Examples include addressing an underperforming staff member, mentoring a more junior colleague, or organising training for your team. For each situation, use the STAR technique: Situation, Task, Action you took and the Result you achieved.

This competency is most relevant for customer-facing or customer service roles in sectors from retail to insurance.

Employers want people who can deploy the right mix of empathy and assertiveness when dealing with customers. Customer service can mean helping awkward, angry or abusive abusive members of the public. You might find it useful to read 1. Managing a quality service and Dealing with a difficult customer. You need to prepare examples of good customer service for interview, proving how satisfied the customer was either through feedback or by showing how you measured their satisfaction levels.

Conversely, a bad answer would be: Lisa LaRue, career coach at CareerWorx, advises focusing on the actions you took, and the resulting successful outcome. Perhaps they also told their friends of the great the customer service they received, resulting in new business for the company.

• .
• The Baroness of New York (1877)!
• .
• The Green Book: Caring for Each Other Sustainably?

You also need to focus on your specific contribution, not your role in a team. HR and resourcing specialist Lydia Fairman says: To see the big picture is to have an in-depth knowledge of the organisation you work for, and industry you work in. Few UK workers possess this competency. More often than not, those that do are experienced, high performing individuals. As well as strategic thinkers, employers are looking for people with strong organisational awareness.

For senior roles, employers need people who can look at the company or organisation, help define goals and objectives, then devise ways of achieving them. Employers need leaders who can evaluate how well the company or organisation is doing, and come up with ways in which things can be approved. To find out about the company, check relevant websites and publications. Read about the names of key people and organisations. Try to gain a picture of the way this organisation sees its future, and demonstrate that you can be part of it.

Talk about how you could replicate previous or related successes with your potential new employer. Begin by talking positively about the organisation, before moving into detail. Many employers value team players. Employers need people who make objective decisions based on data or educated hypotheses, as opposed to personal assumptions. In an interview, you need to show you earn the trust of your colleagues and are willing to place your trust in them.

If you have a track record of taking responsibility, both when working individually or as part of a team, an. Employers like people who take responsibility because they typically possess a strong work ethic and strive for excellence. Use this insight to inform your example and talk specifically about the role you have played within a team and how your skill set helped achieve your team objective. Think of a good example of working in a team, and talk about your experience of working in a team. You might be a natural leader, or someone who persuades others to work together.

You might be an idea builder, a good organiser, or a safe pair of hands, someone who ensures projects are completed on time. Make it crystal clear what you contributed. Were you the ideas person, the co-ordinator, the project driver? Or perhaps you were the person who stopped the other members of the team strangling each other? When handling teamwork interview questions and examples, you also need to show that you can compromise and support group decisions. Teamworking is a highly regarded competency in a variety of work contexts, so you need to show that you are an active and cooperative team member.

Tell a story that includes progress or improvement. Have you improved a process for a customer? Do you innovate to make things run smoother or have you made improvements to a system? These are all things that employers value in an employee, because changing and improving makes their organisation more effective and agile. People who create change constantly evolve their skill set to keep pace with development in their discipline or sector, such as learning a coding language or a new industry regulation.

At senior levels, people who can foster a culture of innovation in the company are among the most sought after. To answer this, you need to show you are comfortable with implementing and responding to change in an organisation. Whitfield says the more you research the company, the more precise your answer for this competency will be.

Discover the challenges facing the organisation. Work out what changes are likely to occur because of them. Then match your answer to similar challenges you have experienced and dealt with in the past. Employers value people who can plan and organise their time and resources, and people who do jobs properly, effectively and to deadlines. If that sounds like you, then employers will want to hire you.

Instead, talk about how you productively manage a full workload. It gives you a chance to re-emphasise your strengths. Throw in a bounce-back question if you feel comfortable, advises John Lees, author of Knockout Interview. For example you could ask: This is a great opportunity to make good job content sound great. Does pressure get to you, do you or thrive under it? Businesses want employees who maintain a high level of standard in their work while juggling multiple projects.