Seven Behavioral Interview questions and answers for child care workers

If you are going for an interview in the near future for a position in day care or to be a pre-school teacher, you might want to prepare yourself with some of the questions below. As with all behavioral interview questions, these are meant to make you uncomfortable, and the best way to answer them is to draw from your experience either in previous employment or from your training and practicums. Be as specific as possible and try and convey a sense of trustworthiness and confidence. 

1. What would you say is your worst quality and why?

What the interviewer is looking for is your body language and reaction. Ouch! I absolutely hate this. As a human services professional,  you want to convey a sense of  likability. The worst thing you can say is that you have no such quality. However, try to pick something fairly tam,  and then tell the interviewer you are working on it. Things not to talk about? Impatience or having a bad temper.  Maybe you could say that sometimes the kids push your buttons, but that you try to have a sense of humor about it. 


2. How do you think children at the various age groups should be disciplined? Why

The interviewer is looking for professional competence, even though this is a very subjective question. Draw from your experience, or if you have not had that much,  try and catch up on your reading from school where various experts would have weighed in on this topic. 

3. What do you think is most important in taking care of infants?
The interviewer wants to know that you are sincere and committed to your profession. Answer this question honestly, saying what you think and why. Give examples from your experience.

4. If two children were disagreeing over something and became physical, what would you do and how would you deal with the situation? 
The interviewer again is looking for your ability to respond promptly, to think on your feet and even to see to what extent you would go to. Would you intervene physically as well? This is a very hands-on job!

5. If there was a child whom just would not sleep at nap time what would you do?
The interviewer is looking for signs of creativity. Working with children demands a fair bit of 'making it up as you go along.  So be creative, and again draw from your experience. Have you done anything especially unusual that has worked?

6. How would you try to calm an infant if they were crying but they were not hungry, wet or sick?
What the interviewer is really asking is how might you respond if there were a possible crisis, where you might not know immediately what to do. Do you have strategies? If so, then say so. Would you call some to assist you?  Explain. Again, do the best you can with your experience. Your interviewer also wants to see how well you think on the spot.

7. If you had to deal with a parent each day whom just was not ever happy what would you do to make them happy?
The interviewer wants to see what kind of inter-personal skills you have. You may want to talk about being a good listener, making the parent feel like he/she has been heard, not reacting, being proactive and solution-oriented, and even giving the person the impression you like them (even if they don't like you)  and to ask for their input. 


Study these sample behavioral Interview questions and answers for child care workers. Hopefully they will help you prepare for your next job interview. 

Annoying interview questions and how to answer them

 Some behavioral interviews questions  are geared to drawing out strengths. Some behavioral interview questions,  on the other hand, are geared to drawing out weaknesses. As I always say, they are designed to make you squirm, especially if you haven't been working the past year. The employer is looking for a way to exclude you. Here are a couple I found Here are some possible answers to annoying behavioral interview questions

. What have you been doing for the last year? Naturally the unemployed lie around all day doing nothing. If you have been volunteering, play that up. If you have been taking a course,  play that up. Of course, looking for a job is a full time job..It is good to mention that you have not been idle. Try starting a business, freelancing, taking a course, expand your horizons. Communicate how all that might be of value to the employer.

What things would cause you to be late for work? Ouch! I hate this interview question.  This one assumes that you'll be late. I would talk  about  things in your control and things that are not in your control. I would definitely mention traffic. Where I live traffic is THE issue. Mind you I live next door to a subway stop, so I very rarely come late, and I give myself enough time to take into account traffic problems. I might ask if punctuality is a crucial part of performing the job. When I was teaching it was important to arrive on time for the class. That wasn't negotiable. I didn't have to be at my desk at 9 a.m. sharp though as part of the office culture.

 Everyone takes time away from work, what are some reasons that you would miss work? What is this best answer to this interview question?  Again, they are assuming you take time off for anything other than illness. I would say again, there are things in your control and things not, that you do the best to manage your life around your work hours, and that the only reason you have missed work is for illness or funerals. In my last job I had flexible working conditions, so I didn't have to worry about dental appointments and unforeseen problems. What was important to my last employer was that I arrived on time to teach the class.

What could you have done better in your last job? Again, it presumes that you did a bad job. Answering this behavioral interview quesiton, I would say, that I strive to do my best. There are always things that could be improved. For me, may it was a lesson plan that could have been better designed/sequenced/executed. Perhaps striving to put more of my recent graduate training into the lessons (there wasn't always time). Don't forget to use the STAR technique

. Do you enjoy just doing your job or being cross-trained? I would say that you like to learn new things, and also to be as useful to the employer as possible. Give an example. At the previous job I had, I voluntarily took on new roles including helping with the budget and assessment.


Yes behavioral interview questions can be annoying. Try not to be reactive in your answers, but to turn it into an opporutnity to say "the better to meet your requirements, dear employer".

List of behavioral interview questions and how to answer them

• Can you tell  me about a project you were reluctant to complete and how you inspired yourself to complete it? 
   
• Let's talk about your most difficult boss, professor or other person.Tell me why that person was difficult and how you successfully dealt with that person? 
   
•  Describe the steps you took to complete a particularly difficult task.
  
  
• What was the riskiest decision  you have ever made. What considerations did you make for that particular decision. 
   
• We often have to work in groups. Tell me about a particular group project. What obstacles did you face? How did you resolve these? 
   
• Describe a situation when you or a group that you were a part of were in danger of missing a deadline. What did you do? 
   
• None of us are the same. Tell me about a time when you worked with a person who did things very differently from you. How did you get the job done. Would you consider working with that person again? 
   
• Tell me about your  three greatest accomplishments to date.  
  
  
   
• Give me an example of something you had to learn quickly. How did you do it? 
  
  
   
• Give me an example of acomplex problem that you solved? What process did you use? 
  
  
• Tell me about an occasion about  make a quick decision. 
  Avoid artificial sounding  answers or anything that sounds memorized. You are not perfect. Interviewers are interested in knowing about how you might have sweated, and how you pulled yourself out, what you learned, and what you might have done differently. We all make mistakes!!
  
  
  Don't forget to use the STAR method - - situation, task, action, result.

More behavioral interview preparation

1. Tell me about your greatest accomplishment on the job.


2. Tell me about a difficult situation you encountered at work and how you overcame it.


3. Give me three adjectives you would use to describe yourself and examples of your work style to support them.


4. Give me three adjectives you would use to describe your weaknesses/areas for improvement and the reasons why you feel you need to work on these.


5. If I was to ask a co-worker about you, how would they describe you on-the-job?


6. Tell me about a time where you were required to work with a difficult person (i.e. client, co-worker, manager, etc.). How did you handle the situation? What was the outcome?


7. If you were given a task to complete in an unrealistic time frame, what would you do?


8. If someone came to you with an enthusiastic, yet unrealistic request, how would you handle it?


9. Why are you looking to leave your current position?


10. What do you want to get out of your next job?


11. Tell me about the best manager you ever had? Now tell me about the worst?


12. What are the three most valuable things you’ve learned while working in your current position?


13. What was the biggest mistake you’ve made on a job? How did you handle the failure?


14. What do you feel makes you successful in your current role? Give an example to support your success.


15. What do you think makes a company good to work for? What do you like about your current company? What could be better?


16. Do you prefer working alone or in teams? Give examples of how you have worked successfully both alone and in a team? What do you attribute your success to?


17. What are your own business philosophies - what do you feel must be present in a successful business?


18. What skills are you looking to develop in your next job? Why?

Behavioral interview questions - uncomfortable question again

Behavioral interview questions are uncomfortable. I've preached that over again on this blog. The more comfortable you get answering them, the better you'll be able to handle the unexpected.

How would you answer this question: Tell me about an objective in your last position that you failed to meet, and why.

No one wants to admit to failure. Pick one that was not essential to your job. Use your STAR (situation, task, action, result).

It is good to add what you learned from this example, and what you would differently the next time, to ensure that you did meet the objective or quickly resolve the problem.

Sample Behavioral Interview response

Continuing on with our examples, here is another behavioral interview response. Here is the question. Some employers may want to examine your capacity for making good judgement calls, how you went through a logical process to make a decision (examining all the relevant facts, for example,) before taking an action. Work, after all, can require more than sitting at a cubicle and doing a series of set tasks. So here's what they could ask you:


Tell me about a time that you had to use your judgment and make a decision in your previous job

This behavioral interview respons could go something like this:

" When I was in charge of ordering supplies for the organization". (Situation)
"I had to decide whether I was going to continue ordering supplies, a month at a time, or buy six month's supply and get a volume discount.(Task)

"What I found from my research, was that ordering six month's supplies would result in a huge savings, and also keep us insulated from price increases. We also tended to have a fairly steady pattern of usage from month to month so it was easy to predict what our needs would be."(Action)

"Indeed I was correct. Prices did go up and we ended up saving money on our office supplies purchase". (Result).

Sample answer to a behavioral interview question - Part 2

Blog readers like samples. That much I've learned in a year of blogging. So here for your edification is another sample answer to a behavioral interview questions.

This one comes from real life. I had been interviewed for a teaching job by a group sitting around a board table. One interviewer asked: "Tell us about a time where something went wrong in the classroom and what you did about it".

Well that threw me a loop. Like most people, I have a scripted set of answers that extol my strong and most saleable skills. But, "something going wrong? So, I thought about it. The Interviewer continued..."we've all had it happen.." So that encourage me. And here is the answer I gave.

Situation: I told the interviewers about my first teaching assignment where I had a group of office administrative students, with whom I was struggling in class.

Task: I had to creat lessons to meet course requirements in grammar and writing, (but obviously there was something I wasn't getting).

Action: After reflecting on the situation, I realized I hadn't carefully assessed this group of learning, and used approaches that didn't resonate with their learning style.

Result: I changed the the lesson plan to less "lecturing" and more hands-on tasks. It worked better.

What won my interviewers over was that I had learned from the experience and that I did find an approach that worked. So, if you did mess up ( and we all do), be sure to convey how you learn from your experiences. We are all works in progress.