I received a page of questions that a popular restaurant chain uses in its hiring procedures, and I thought I’d share a few of the most interesting ones here.

The page is quite complete; it gives example questions and answers for each of the areas that the company is interested in. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no area for education or work experience. All of the questions deal with work-related situations, personality, and communication skills.

Work skills:
-Tell me about a time when you could not help a customer.
– When multitasking, how do you decide on the order of your tasks?
– How did you get along with your last coworkers?
– Describe a difficult situation at work and what you did to resolve it.
– How did you solve personality problems at work?

Personality attributes:
– Why do you want to work at [name of restaurant]?
– Why do you want to work in the restaurant industry?
– How have you improved yourself in the last six months/year/two years?
– What makes a good leader a good leader?
– What did you do when you had to make a difficult decision at work?

Communication:
– How do you learn what a customer wants?
– What did you do when you saw a coworker or manager doing something wrong?
– If a customer becomes angry, how do you calm them down?
– How did you help a colleague improve their work?
– How do you deal with negative evaluations, assessments, or feedback at work?

I like these questions. They really give the candidate an interesting way to explain their connections to the job, their own ideas, and their abilities. Add them to your collections of practice questions to look at your skills from a new perspective.