Interview Tips

muthymlei
By muthymlei

Hi guys. I have an interview tomorrow for Direct Sales Agent in a Bank. Please give me some tips and possible questions for this position. Thanks...

By anonymous• 5 Jun 2008 10:18
Rating: 2/5
anonymous

Oh well. A job interview is an important moment in your life. "Life comes down to moments and this is one of them." I don't interview well. I went through 11 job interviews in March before I landed this job.

By sintri03• 4 Jun 2008 21:06
Rating: 4/5
sintri03

all this he will surely miss his interview tomorrow.

muttymalei, make sure you get a good sleep tonight.

dont want to look tired surely

 

We are only children once...but we can keep the child in us forever.

By anonymous• 4 Jun 2008 21:05
anonymous

visit www.monster.com

By anonymous• 4 Jun 2008 21:00
Rating: 4/5
anonymous

I've spent a few years compiling this list of job interview questions. Hope it helps. I'm not sure how releveant for banking. But it may give you ideas:

GENERAL BACKGROUND

1) Tell us about yourself. How did you like working in your past jobs?

• Passion for teaching Ss

• Like to see Ss succeed & grow – enjoy seeing their success

• Met many interesting Ss – diverse interests & personalities (Salah Fehaid)

• Grew as a teacher – developed transferable skills

• know what students need to succeed & areas they need extra work

• for Arab Ss: RW & study skills need extra work; LS strong skills

• read students better – consider Ss language, culture, classroom

situation

• find class barometer (e.g., one typical student)

• know how to plan, develop, and deliver class lessons

• how to present & explain teaching points to Ss

• strong classroom management skills (e.g., using Ss-names,

welcoming to class, class-start quizzes, seating Ss strategically)

• proficient in the use of computers in classroom (PowerPoint, Rosetta Stone,

Read Up Speed Up, blogging)

• apply CLT in classroom

2) What really excites you in the classroom?

• a student that catches/understands something that I am teaching

• example: explaining/showing how to guess a word in context

3) What duties have you had in your present school?

4) What’s your teaching methodology? What’s your classroom like?

What interactions might I see in your classroom?

• CLT – focus on learning how to communicate (through LSRW)

• S-needs: student-centred class: sensitive to Ss needs (needs analysis)

• Real-world needs: relate Ting to Ss real world needs (EAP, TENOR, job skills)

• Active learning: Ss take active role in their learning

• encourage max S class participation – less TT

• all Ss know they learned ST in lesson – check this off in binder obj list

• Ss know lesson objectives at class start

• Checks on understanding

• e.g., Ss maintain class binder (language obj list, compiled

vocab/grammar list & reference material, compositions), assign project

to a group who assign the projects’ sub-assignments (emphasize

process)

• Learn by doing – e.g., projects/tasks, games (info gap/jigsaw)

• Role of T: develop good T-S relationship – T-S contracts

• T as leader, manager, or facilitator

• Non-threatening classroom (Ss know boundaries)

• mistakes are interlanguage windows

• Encourage critical thinking – using problem-solving tasks (desert island task)

• Lesson variety: activities (mechanical & problem-solving), ways to present, ways to assess, supplemental material

5) Why are you interested in teaching at this school?

• desire to move to this university with EAP background

• my teaching style matches your style & background

EAP-focus: teaching academic English (academic RW: reading & responding to academic discourse)

 focus on communicative competence & skills and not language knowledge/Ss keeping T happy

 encourage Ss to develop independent & critical thought

 help Ss develop good study habits

• vocabulary notebook, independent learning

 following curriculum and teaching to Ss needs

• using creativity in helping Ss efficiently achieve learning objectives

• e.g., preteaching vocab that Ss hear in listening text

• interest in using WebCT for student learning: used Moodle

• contribute in many ways to teaching community

• help to develop PD opportunities here: share my experience

• curriculum & materials development (my expertise)

• this school has great reputation for Ss & supportive admin

6) Could you explain how this experience relates to Ss in our context?

What skills or abilities can you offer us that would give students an edge?

• Dedicated, hard-working, reliable, flexible, talented

• Dedicated to Ss learning & success

• available for Ss in many ways (office, between class)

• helping passive & unmotivated Ss participate in class

• use Ss’ names & situations

• Hard-working: daily material prep & lesson planning (1st priority each day)

• Reliable: on-time for class start/end/breaks, fresh classes (T energizes me)

• Flexible: adapt to different Ss, cultures, situations, classroom dynamics

• Talented: broad Ting background: taught all skills in diff contexts (EAP, ESP, TENOR)

• accumulated many transferable skills

• know what students need to succeed & areas they need extra work

• for Arab Ss: RW & study skills need extra work; LS strong skills

• read students better – consider Ss language, culture, classroom

situation

• find class barometer (e.g., one typical student)

• know how to plan, develop, and deliver class lessons

• how to present & explain teaching points to Ss

• strong classroom management skills (e.g., using Ss-names,

welcoming to class, class-start quizzes, seating Ss strategically)

• proficient in the use of computers in classroom (PowerPoint, Rosetta

Stone, Read Up Speed Up, blogging)

• apply CLT in classroom

7) What did you get out of your MA in TESOL?

• Practicum: teacher-training course with master teacher

• Many courses: how to teach skills, develop material, course design, SLA principles, meeting colleagues

9) Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

• Stay in EFL but aiming for more supervisory or management positions

• With more qualifications (CALL courses, management systems)

INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS

10) Weaknesses?

• I try to do too much when preparing for lessons

• When I prepare lessons, I sometimes plan too many tasks

• My teaching team reigns me in & guides me

11) What did you do when you had a problem with a colleague?

• Resolving example: I thought that a T in a teaching team was not pulling his weight

• I met with this T in private and spoke with him about the issue.

• He explained his situation. He said he didn’t realize that he wasn’t

pulling his weight. He said he would work harder in the future.

• proactive & followed chain of command

12) How do you deal with discipline or motivation problems?

• Prevention: ways to motivate Ss

• create a learner-friendly atmosphere – supportive (use names), encourage

feedback, strategic seating

• stress goal setting – active role in own learning

• good teaching: support students to achieve language objectives

• maintain office hours -- friendly

• reward Ss for practice & study – games/smiles/free talk

• encourage learner autonomy and independent learning

• Remedy: Isolate problem & find cause – go through mental checklist

• Causes? teacher, student, material, context

• Teacher: self-survey (negative, unprepared, unfair)

• Student: consider Ss history, class performance

• Material/task: culturally appropriate, good fit for class, clearly

introduced/explained, pitched at Ss level

• Context: after/before lunch, end/start of day/week, outside noise, tired

• Action options? staring/silence, redirect Ss attention, rearrange seats, in/after class one-to-one discussion, refer to class contract, refer to counsellor

• EXAMPLE: a student was late a lot

• I pulled this student aside and advised him to be on-time

• Next, I got a counsellor involved. Counsellor found out: student had to

drive his sister to school. So, counsellor suggested driving the sister earlier

so student could arrive on-time

13) How did you know what students thought about your lesson?

TEACHING SKILLS

14) What skills have you taught?

15) How would you teach X?

Can you describe a lesson that you were pleased with?

16) Can you tell me how you plan a lesson?

17) Assessment

• How do you determine whether your lesson objectives/main aims

have been met?

• How do you know if students have learned something in class?

• Can you give me an example of how you monitor and

correct students in your classes?

• Informal: Monitoring Ss in class for performance

• Asking Qs that require skills, rephrasing instructions

• Formal: tests/quizzes

• based on textbook or other course objectives

17) What common errors have you noticed your students make?

18) What strategies do you use to get students to learn & improve vocabulary?

• How? Teach core vocab: common, frequent, useful

• Teach words in context (collocations, whole sentences. Situations)

• Teach words form, use, meaning

• Teach groups of words together – cluster/ mind map

• Using vocab grids – helps see word relationships – helps develop critical thinking

• discourage L1 translations

• common tasks: cloze, guessing words, synonyms, find meaning, comprehension Qs

• recycling vocab

• ways to learn vocab: mnemonics, learning roots (prefixes, suffixes),

extended reading, learning context

19) What strategies do you use to improve Ss academic listening skills?

• Skill areas: lectures, interacting with peers/TA/professor

• 3 problems in lecture listening: decoding, comprehension, taking notes

• note-taking skills: distinguish important pts, deciding when to write, writing concisely/clearly, deciphering afterwards, recognizing discourse markers

• ways to help with note-taking: giving overall lecture framework, shorthand, using charts, different note-taking styles: linear, mind-map

• lecture delivery styles: reading, conversational, rhetorical

• lecture content: giving info or ideas/points

• practice: cloze listening script, predict discourse direction, practice note-taking

20) What things would you have to be careful about when choosing an authentic reading text?

• Fits in with recent course theme and current objectives

• choose appropriate level of difficulty

• word/sentence/text length, content, vocab, shared knowledge/assumptions, cultural background, clause embedding

• interesting & relevant with purpose

• Culturally appropriate

• Pictures & diagrams? aids for understanding b/c communicate info

• Pre-taught vocab/concepts?

• Choosing text is easier than preparing text for class

21) How would you exploit a reading text?

• Reading skills: consider which skills need: scanning, skimming, making inferences, guessing word meanings from context, understanding sentences/paragraphs

• Reading Tasks: Design tasks that help Ss achieve course objectives – clear purpose

• insure the level of specificity of each objective is clear enough

to understand (eg. scanning for a phone number vs. an argument)

• task-types: recognition, structuring, interpretation, reading speed, comprehension practice, synonyms, paragraph topics, summary completion

• TYPICAL LESSON

• Pre-reading tasks: increases students’ ability to focus on reading (predicting

text content, presenting new vocab)

• While-reading task: encourages active reading

• Post-reading task: complete task related to reading (use info from reading)

22) How do you approach writing in the EAP class?

• process writing: understand/practice what good writers do

• prewriting: making mind-map/list of ideas on topic

• drafting: writing from prewriting – several tasks

• evaluating/editing: well-written? thesis statement, topic sentences, flow

• revising

• vocab introducing/recycling

• writing paragraphs / essays

23) What examples of writing do you do in your class?

24) What do I do with a paragraph in class?

25) What kind of feedback do you give Ss in writing class?

• Marking error codes on student papers (WW: wrong word, RO: run-on)

• Motivates Ss to try to write well

• Conference with student during class about writing

• Feedback on these areas: grammar, vocab, spelling, punctuation, paragraphs, flow/organization of sentences/ideas, relation of sentences to topic sentences

MATERIALS

26) What textbooks have you used? What did you think of them?

• Listening: Basics in listening, Learn to listen, Contemporary Topics

• Reading: Basic Reading Power, Active skills for reading, Weaving it together

• Writing: Intro to academic writing, 1st steps in academic writing, Get read to write, Ready to write, Ready to write more, Gateways to academic writing

• Integrated: Headway, Challenges, Cutting Edge, Skills in English

• Problems? Gaps in TB that need to be filled with supps, progress too fast through skills/grammar, too busy & difficult to follow flow for some Ss

27) What kind of material have you developed?

• Powerpoint, games/info gap activities, tasks/projects, worksheets

28) If I want to prepare material, what steps would I go through?

29) How do you computers in your classroom?

OR How would CALL language lab programs help your students?

OR What e-learning background do you have?

OR Describe the language software you have used.

OR What further class tasks did you do related to their work with any example language software?

30) What idea have you read about in a book or journal that you used in the classroom?

31) How did you present your conference presentation/

By anonymous• 4 Jun 2008 20:14
anonymous

Show up on time and make sure you know exactly what the bank does - google them to find some topical news (did they do a big deal?)

By anonymous• 4 Jun 2008 20:06
anonymous

how much will I earn??

Do you have a safe that I can openin the middle of the night?

Will you miss a couple of million?

Whens break/lunch time?

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

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