1. How is your organization funded?
2. Does your organization use volunteer help?
3. Does your organization have paid positions?
4. How is your organization lead?
5. Which community group does your organization primarily service? why did you decide to enter the field of library and information science? OR What motivated you to seek a library degree?
6. What kind of position are you looking for when you graduate?
7. Why did you decide to apply for this position?
8. What are strengths and weaknesses of your organization?
9. List three of your most important/proudest accomplishments.
10. What kind of work environment do you prefer?
11. What motivates you? ALSO Have you used these motivators with others?
12. How are you qualified for this job? OR What qualifications do you have that make you think you will be a success at this job?
13. What supervisory experience have you had?
14. How would you characterize your supervisory style?
15. What would you do about implementing the provisions of the American with Disabilities Act (or some other new policy) in our library, and how would you prioritize this among your other duties?
16. The person in this position needs to be innovative and proactive. Can you describe some things you have done to demonstrate these qualities?
17. How would you rate your communication skills and what have you done to improve them?
18. What do you feel is the place of bibliographic instruction in the library? Have you ever taught in a classroom setting? Would you be comfortable teaching BI courses?
19. What else besides your school and job experience qualifies you for this job?
20. What is your experience with collection development?
21. What experience do you have dealing with academic scholars?
22. What is your experience with automated systems and with computers in general?
23. What have you read lately, and what are you reading now?
24. While this position involves some specific skills (language, computer, cataloging, etc.), it is more of a generalist position. How do you feel that your background fits into this?
25. What are the personal characteristics and qualities that you would bring to this position that would be particularly helpful in fulfilling the responsibilities of this position?
26. Why did you choose X University for your graduate education in library and information science?
27. Tell us about yourself -- why did you choose this type of work?
28. Tell us about X University's online catalog.
29. What professional groups are you a member of, and how active have you been in those groups?
30. You have just had a short tour of this library. Did any aspect or anything you saw or heard about this library surprise you? Would you change anything about this library?
31. Why do you think more students are going into public services than technical services?
32. Tell us about your experience with online searching.
33. How do you work in groups, and what experience have you had working in groups?
34. What appeals to you about this position?
35. Why do you want to move to this area?
36. How do you feel about providing general reference services for undergraduates or for high school or junior high school students?
37. What are some aspects of your present position that you like?
38. What are some aspects of your present position that you dislike?
39. What do you see yourself doing five or ten years from now? OR Where do you see yourself going from here?
40. What is your cataloging experience?
41. What do you think a reference librarian's duties should be?
42. Tell us about your subject background and about your coursework outside of library science.
43. How will your other experiences outside of librarianship aid you in this position?
44. What is your opinion of X University's approach to holistic librarianship? How well is the system functioning?
45. How are government documents handled at X University?
46. What is your interlibrary loan experience?
47. What experience have you had using the Internet?
48. Do you have the skills necessary to create and maintain our WWW home pages?
49. What do you see as the future of the Internet as a reference tool?
50. How will libraries mesh use of print and electronic resources?
51. What do you see as the budget implications of increasing use of electronic resources in libraries?
52. Can you install software on computers and perform basic maintenance on them?
53. What courses (college/graduate school) did you find most satisfying? Least satisfying? Why?
54. What would you say you learned from your college/graduate school experiences that you see being carried over to your life today?
55. Do you plan to continue your education?
56. What kind of people do you like to work with?
57. What kind of people do you find it most difficult to work with? What do you do to improve the situation?
58. Do you prefer working alone or in groups?
59. Starting with your last job, would you tell me about some of your achievements that were recognized by your superiors?
60. What are some things you would like to avoid in a job? Why?
61. What are some of the things on your jobs that you feel you have done particularly well?
62. What does success mean to you? How do you judge it?
63. What are some of the things about your last job that you found difficult to do?
64. What are some of the problems you encounter in doing your job? Which one frustrates you the most? What do you usually do about it?
65. How has your present job developed you to take on even greater responsibilities?
66. What do you have going for you that might make you successful in such a job?
67. Who or what in your life would you say influenced you most with regard to your career objectives?
68. What would you say there is about you that has accounted for your fine progress to date?
69. What traits or qualities do you feel could be strengthened or improved?
70. What motivates you to put forth your best effort?
71. What kinds of things do you feel most confident in doing? Somewhat less confident in doing?
72. What are some of the thing you are either doing now or have thought about doing that are self-development activities?
73. Talk about a time when you had work problems or stresses that were difficult for you.
74. Customers frequently create a great deal of pressure. What has been your experience in this area?
75. What types of pressures do you experience on your current job? How do you cope with these pressures?
76. Describe a time when you were under pressure to make a decision. Did you react immediately or take time in deciding what to do?
77. What types of things make you angry? How do you react?
78. How do you react when you see co-workers disagreeing? Do you become involved or hold back?
79. Do you prefer to have a job in which you have well laidout tasks and responsibilities, or one in which your work changes on a frequent basis?
80. In your current position what types of decisions do you make without consulting your immediate supervisor?
81. How do you typically handle yourself in a fast-paced environment?
82. How would you describe your work pace: fast, moderate, slow, or if it varies and under what circumstances?
83. What are your strengths? Why?
84. What are your weaknesses? Why?
85. How do you handle a heavy workload with many deadlines?
86. In all jobs there are heavy periods and light periods. What do you do in such cases?
87. You are given several rush projects to be completed in a short period of time. How would you establish priorities? Why?
88. How would you describe your organizational abilities?
89. How would you describe your attendance and punctuality habits?
90. How would you describe your work habits? How would you describe your own performance standards?
91. What ideas did you contribute to your department? What were the results?
92. Give an example of something you recommended that was adopted.
93. What have you done to make your job easier or more interesting?
94. Give an example of a project you were responsible for starting. What did you do?
95. How did it work out?
96. How much information do you need to get started on a new project or assignment?
97. When have you had to produce results, without sufficient guidelines or information?
98. What did you do?
99. What is the most creative thing you have done in a past job? How did it occur?
100. 0 In the last year, what innovative ideas have you had at work? Were you able to implement them? How were they innovative?
101. Give an example of a situation at your previous employer when you have had to keep up with changes in technology, terminology, and information specific to your field?
102. How quickly have you learned new processes for a job?
103. What did you have to learn?
104. How soon could you learn this job well enough to become productive?
105. If time did not permit a training period on a new job, how would you go about learning the things expected or required of you?
106. Give three examples of your adaptability.
107. Describe the most recent formal learning experience you’ve had.
108. What are your long-term professional goals?
109. How do the duties and responsibilities in this position relate to that goal?
110. What do you consider to be important attributes of a supervisor?
111. What kind of supervisor do you enjoy working for most? Least?
112. 2 Describe a specific time on any job that you’ve held when you were faced with issues that tested your problem-solving skills. What did you do?
113. Give an example of a time when you had to keep from speaking or not finish a task because you did not have enough information to come to a good decision. Be specific.
114. Give an example of a time when you had to make a quick decision.
115. Give an example of a time when you had to use your fact-finding skills to get information to solve a problem- then describe how you analyzed the information to come to a decision.
116. Give an example of a problem you faced on a job and describe how you solved it.
117. Describe your most stressful work-related situation and how you handled it.
118. How do you typically handle yourself under pressure or stress?
119. Describe a difficult situation you encountered with a supervisor or co-worker and how you handled it.
120. What are some examples of important types of decisions or recommendations you are called upon to make in your past/present position?
121. Most of us can think of an important decision we’d make quite differently if we could do it over. Any examples from your experience?
122. Give an example of a difficult decision you had to make at your last job.
123. How did you solve it?
124. Follow-up: Why did you choose that method instead of another solution?
125. What has been a stubborn or recurring problem area you would have liked to solve in your cur-rent job, but haven’t yet?
126. What process do you follow in solving problems?
127. What methods do you use to make decisions? Please give an example of your approach.
128. What kinds of decisions did you have authority over?
129. Which ones did you have to check with your manager before making?
130. What information or technical support has helped you succeed on the job?
131. Have you ever had to make a decision before you had all the data you wanted?
132. Give an example. What did you do?
133. What is effective communication?
134. Tell me about a job experience when you had to speak up in order to be sure that others knew what you thought or felt.
135. Describe how you would endeavor to convince your boss to grant you additional funds for a purpose you have-in-mind.
136. Describe some projects you worked on that required strong writing skills.
137. What was the level of your responsibility?
138. Who was the primary audience?
139. How would you characterize your written and oral communication-skills?
140. What do you require from a supervisor?
141. Would you rather work on a team or on your own?
142. Describe what a "team" environment means to you.
143. What experience have you had working as a member of a team? What are the advantages?
144. What experience have you had with graphic design and desktop publishing? Please provide samples.
145. What are some basic principles of working with colors?
146. What sort of consideration goes into designing a brochure?
147. What do you look for in a blueline?
148. What information and materials would you provide to a service bureau if you had to produce a brochure?
149. If money were not a concern, what platform would you choose for an Internet information server, and why?
150. When creating Web documents, what tools do you use?
151. What kind of experience do you have with HTML editors? Plain text editors? Web site management tools?
152. What does it mean for a program to be called a OGI?
153. What is your experience with OGI programming?
154. What are the top 5 or 10 characteristics of a good Web site?
155. Please illustrate by describing a good Web site that you recently produced.
156. How did you plan and design the Web site?
157. How do you decide when and how to revise or enhance a Web site?
158. What, in your opinion, are the basic characteristics of a bad Web site?
159. How would you proceed if you were asked to re-design a less than adequate departmental Web site?
160. If you were given an assignment to put an existing print publication on the Web, how would you proceed? Why?
161. Have you ever connected Web forms to a backend database? Discuss your experience with such forms.
162. How do you stay current with developments in communications, graphic design, and Web publishing?
163. How would you define effective communication? What skills do you have that make you a good communicator?
164. How do you choose which medium/media to use to reach your various audiences?
165. What are the strengths and weaknesses associated with each medium?
166. What are some of the strategies you have used to communicate technical information to a wide variety of people with differing levels of expertise?
167. How often in your professional experience have you encountered conflict between yourself and the subject of your story? Describe one such example.
168. How would you describe your management philosophy and style?
169. Have you ever had to initiate corrective action for an employee? If so, what steps did you take to implement this action?
170. In what ways might you want to modify your approach to dealing with subordinates?
171. Some managers keep a very close check on their organization. Others use a loose rein. What patterns do you follow?
172. How has it changed during the last few years?
173. How would you describe your standards of performance?
174. What would your staff say?
175. What would your supervisor say?
176. How would you deal with an employee who was not doing his or her job properly?
177. What philosophy and techniques do you use in motivating your staff and energizing them?
178. How would you deal with an employee who does not appear to measure up to increasing demands of a job?
179. How do you think your staff would describe your delegation style?
180. How do you get your employees (or others) to follow you?
181. How do you use your power or authority to achieve your goals?
182. Give an example of how you delegated responsibility for a recent assignment; for instance, how you delegated an assignment, and what you did to monitor it.
183. Can you give us an overview of how an academic department functions in the University?
184. What is your commitment to and understanding of Affirmative Action as it relates to students, staff, faculty and recruitment?
185. What about retention, staff development or promotion?
186. Describe the type of relationship you think should exist between staff and students on this campus.
187. How do you make sure that your employees are accountable?
188. What do you typically do when you hear of a problem in your area?
189. How useful have you found written procedures and guidelines in helping you manage your area?
190. Do you believe that the chain of command is important? Why? When do you think it might inhibit organizational effectiveness?
191. What responsibility do you have for budgeting?
192. What budgeting method do you use?
193. How do you go about estimating expenses and budgets?
194. What recent decision have you made that had an impact on finances? How did you assess its impact?
195. What experience have you had with long and short-term budget projections? Please explain.
196. What types of experiences have you had in dealing with difficult customers?
197. Describe a problem person you have had to deal with.
198. What did you say or do?
199. What have been your experiences in dealing with the general public?
200. When have people really tried your patience?
201. What important goals have you set in the past, and how successful have you been in working toward their accomplishment?
202. Do you do personal planning? If so, what are your goals?
203. What things give you the greatest satisfaction?
204. How would you describe yourself?
205. In what ways do you think you can make a contribution to our department?
206. What two or three accomplishments have given you the most satisfaction? Why?
207. Describe your most rewarding experience.
208. In what kind of work environment are you most comfortable?
209. What do you know about our library? university? community? company?
210. You mentioned you enjoyed your last job. What did you enjoy most? Least?
211. Why do you think this library should hire you?
212. What will your last supervisor tell me are your two weakest areas?
213. If you were hiring someone for this job, what qualities would you look for?
214. How do you feel about your ability to write, spell, and communicate?
215. What kind of feedback have you received about your writing ability?
216. Describe your experience in creating documents, proposals, research findings, or any other form of written copy.
217. What does the term two-way communication mean to you?
218. . When have you successfully used two-way communication?
219. Some people get to know strangers quickly, while others prefer to take their time letting people get to know them.
220. Describe how you entered relationships when you were "new" on a job.
221. Some people have the ability to "step into another's shoes." When has this skill been required of you?
222. How did you organize your work in your last position? What happened to your plan when emergencies came up?
223. Describe how you determined your priorities on your last job.
224. Describe how you schedule your time on an unusually hectic day. Give a specific example.
225. Are you a person who likes to "try new things," or "stay with regular routines"? Give an example.
226. What is your philosophy of reference?
227. What are your 3 (or 5) favorite reference books? OR If you were on a desert island, which 3 (or 5) reference books would you want to have?