Stress inevitably pops up in the midst of a challenging and chaotic work tasks. Climbing the professional ladder is impossible with a tingling or surge of stress. It may be perfectly natural for some to panic while climbing ladders, but the degrees of fear vary. Similarly, every candidate’s ability to effectively handle stress varies. Some reach the summit of Mount Everest, others succumb to their fatigue. Stress interviews are akin to any competition. A candidate is overburdened by mounting heaps of intimidating questions and the one who delivers the finest result wins! Principally in the financial and sales sector, work pressure escalates and the employees must dismiss every iota of stress to achieve maximum success. Questions for stress interviews provoke strapping emotions of anger, anxiety and misery within most candidates. Interviewers tend to adopt techniques that evaluate behaviour of applicants under stress by trying to evoke emotional reactions from them. Interviewees that react defensively are often rendered incapable of handling stressful situations, and are hence crossed off the employer’s list. Have a look at this section to find some of the popular stress interview questions.
Sample Stress Interview Questions
-
What has been the most embarrassing moment in your entire life?
-
So what do you feel about working for twenty hours at a stretch?
-
From your experience, please give us an example about how and when you worked with a team that faced immense stress?
-
Describe the most horrifying stress related experience in your professional and personal life.
-
What at best helps you overcome stress?
-
What is the worst thing that you have heard about our company?
-
Why did you switch to philosophy? Could it be that you were unable to handle engineering?
-
Ouch! Look at this test score? Even my five year old daughter could score higher!
-
Do people at work hate your guts? Do/Did you have any enemies at your present/previous workplace?
-
How would you evaluate me as an interviewer?
-
Rate yourself from a scale of 1 to 10 as a good employee. Nine? Don’t flatter yourself! Five? That’s it? You think we are recruiting a mediocre workforce?
-
See that shoe rack on the left corner? Sell it to me in 1 minute! Sorry, I’m not convinced. Try Harder. No, I’m still not going to open my wallet. You’re hopeless indeed!
-
If you need to work a full whole one month due to nearby quarter results but your best friend’s wedding is around the corner. What will you do to be exempt from such urgent work?
-
If you are a leader of the team, what could you do better than the truly leader?
-
Why should I hire an outsider when I could fill the job with someone inside the company?
-
As a teacher, you caught a student cheating on their test. How would you react?
-
How do you feel about going away on business trips every fortnight?
-
With your background, we believe that you are under qualified to join our company. Why are you confident of getting hired?
-
You clearly haven't had sufficient experience in this field. Can you really be an asset to our company?
-
We can’t pay you any more than you received in your former company. Do you still think that joining this organization is worthwhile?
-
Don't you feel you are a little too old/young for this job?
-
How often have you been absent from school, work or training?
-
What qualifications do you have that makes you think you will be successful?
-
In what way do you think you can make a contribution to society?
-
Can you please jump from that window?
Some Points To Note
-
In a certain stress interview, a candidate was actually asked to jump from the window. That candidate didn’t manifest any horror at the demand and proved to be intelligent and fit for the role as he/she climbed on the window and jumped back into the room. After all, nobody told the candidate the jump out of the window!
-
These questions might be relatively easy if allotted sufficient time individually. Nevertheless, these questions are rapidly launched in the candidate’s direction, all at the same time!
