Co-Op Student
We analyzed 248 interview reviews for Co-Op Student from various job sites, social network groups and forums.
Here are the most frequent job interview questions asked by HR managers during initial phone or onsite interviews. This list does not include technical or factual questions.
10 frequent non-technical questions for Co-Op Student:
According to our research, hiring managers looking to fill Co-Op Student role ask soft skills interview questions 83% more frequently than for other roles.
1. Tell me about yourself top question
How to answer
Most job candidates expect this to be one of the first interview questions and probably think of it as an “icebreaker” to get the interview started. It is much more than that! It is your opportunity to show the interviewer your relevance for the job. You want the employer to know that you are qualified to do the job, you are interested in doing the job and capable of getting it done.
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About Yourself
What is your current occupation? Define yourself professionally in one statement.
Pick 3 key skills that make you great at your work (your Key Selling Points). How have you applied these skills?
Try to give some numbers to support your statement.
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About The Company
Your first step is to Research the company to find out as much as you can about what they do and their approach to their business and their employees.
Based on what you know about the company and the job description, why are you interested in the position you are applying for?
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About The Fit
Now is the right time to show the fit between your skills and the company's requirements. Your answer works best if you emphasize your relevance. How do you do this? You will have already researched the company, studied the job description to identify their needs and possible pain points and prepared the relevant Star Stories that show how you addressed similar issues in the past. Your next step is to develop your Present-Past-Present approach.
Start with the Present. Focus on the skills and experience from your most recent positions. What has enabled you to get the job done successfully and how this relates to what the employer is looking to accomplish.
Next go back to the Past. Here is where your Star story comes in. Explain how you were able to use your skills and experience to accomplish a task that relates to an area of concern for the employer.
Finally come back to the Present – summarizing the lessons you learned and how they shaped your response and approach today.
Remember, the whole conversation is about the present, not the past. Just one sentence can summarize why your approach works, and its applicability and relevance to this position.
Pro Tip
You can also end with a question like:
“Do you know what the current needs in the company/department are, where my skills and experience can help?”
That can help you learn more about the company and the job, turn the “interrogation” into a conversation and will allow you to relax some tension.
Read our blog post to learn more about how to answer this question.
2. Why did you choose your major?
How to answer
Everyone has his/her reasons to pick a major.
There are hundreds and hundreds of careers to choose from and most people pick a major that will give them a background in the career they want to pursue.
When you come to a job interview you will be definitely asked this question.
The interviewers are seeking to understand your underlying motivations for selecting this career.
It is also a good question for them to learn how much planning and thought actually went into your career selection. It is a window into your personality and interests.
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About Yourself
This is your chance to highlight your strengths and how your major prepared you for your future plans.
Your answer to this question should reflect your passion and interest in the field you chose. Be genuine.
There’s every reason to display your passions and interest in your major. They will give interviewers a sense of who you really are.
Think about who or what influenced your career choice and include the positive influences, not the negative ones.
- How does this tie into your major?
- How will you bring your passion and unique knowledge to the new company?
Emphasize your strong people skills and excellent communication skills, allowing you to connect with others.
Think of the skills and experiences you gained through your major, think back to assignments and projects from your studies, internships and previous jobs. Consider the skills you developed working on those projects.
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About The Company
Write down a list of skills and experiences you gained through your major studies.
Then, look at the job listing itself.
Match up any of your skills and experiences that relate to the requirements of the job. How can you apply them to your new position, as well as the future?
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About The Fit
Use this question as an opportunity to mention a few skills related to your chosen major that would also be relevant in the workplace.
Point to a good culture fit.
Be positive, showing your enthusiasm. Let them know you're excited to be where you are.
Discuss what you enjoy about the industry you’re considering and why you could see yourself working in it. Even if your major is not directly related to the job, you can likely find connections between the two.
This is also a chance to explain other ways you have developed skills that will fulfill the role you're applying for.
For example, perhaps you were a biology major who is applying for a job in computer programming. You might explain that you took a number of online and extracurricular classes on programming to develop the skills needed for the job.
Pro Tip
Let your past decisions and accomplishments shine through. Once you nail your interview, you'll be on your way to a successful career path.
3. Tell me about a time you had a conflict at work. How did you handle it? What have you learned?
How to answer
Wherever you go, you will always have to work with people. This means that there is a greater chance for conflict to happen. This question helps the interviewer determine how well you would fit within the organization.
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About Yourself
Think of the times you had to deal with conflict.
- What were the different ways you were able to address the situation?
- If you were the cause of the conflict, how did the other person talk you down from the conflict?
- What were the key lessons you learned through your experience?
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About The Company
Research the company and its culture.
- What do they value?
- Is there anything that you can find about how they deal with conflict resolution?
Reading comments to their social media posts often prove helpful to see how they react to customers' complaints.
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About The Fit
- What have you found out about the company’s culture and job description?
- Are they looking for someone who can take charge and resolve conflict?
Tell a story of how you addressed conflict and how it turned a negative into a positive. Try to conclude with your lessons learned or methodology for approaching conflicts - this will show the interviewer that you would be able to apply your methodology to future situations.
Use the STAR method to frame your story.
Pro Tip
A key to addressing conflict is listening, communication and emotional intelligence. Highlight these skills.
If you're able to, turn the question around and ask the interviewer if they have experienced the same thing. This will start a conversation, which is the goal of an interview.
4. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
How to answer
This question belongs to a family of behavioral, or even more precisely, reflective questions.
The interviewer wants to learn two things about you by asking this question.
- They want to know what you think about the job you are applying for. Remember, they are interviewing you for the job that's open right now. Are you a good fit and will you do a good job for them?
- Just as important, they want to get an idea of your ambitions and goals for yourself and if your goals align with their needs, especially going into the future.
In this way the employer should see how you see yourself today, and whether you are ambitious and strive to grow as a professional, and whether you like to learn and develop your skills.
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About Yourself
What challenges do you like overcoming? Where are you starting from and where might you be going?
For example, let's say the position you are applying for is junior accountant. It includes a wide range of tasks such as basic bookkeeping, financial analysis, and reporting. If accounting is your chosen field, then you would most likely want to move in the direction of obtaining your CPA so that you might step up to more responsibility as an accounting manager or senior auditor within the next 5 years. Your responses should make sense in how you see yourself growing in your professional career.
However, at this point, if you are happy just where you are and want to further your current skills, that is also fine as long as there is a growth path for you that can be imagined and described.
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About The Company
Research the company to learn what career opportunities may be available in the department you are applying to, and what the trends are in the company in general.
- Is the business expanding, are they opening new locations, or starting new projects?
- Or are they heavily automating and cutting staff?
Let’s say you are applying for a UX designer position for a brand-new product.
In the future, if the product becomes a success - which is what the company hopes for - the company will hire more designers and you may become a lead designer, or you may become a product manager.
On a side note: If you train your mind to be open to opportunities you will be amazed at how much this world has to offer to you!
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About The Fit
And, of course, try to see where the perfect fit lies between your own potential and aspirations, and the company’s trends and hopes.
However, beware of the risk of showing too much excitement for future opportunities compared to your attitude towards the current position.
As we said earlier, you must show interest and enthusiasm for the position you are applying for. If the interviewer senses that you are more enthusiastic about future growth than about the current position, they may conclude that you are not the right person for the job at hand.
Pro Tip
This question gives you a good opportunity to showcase your Key Selling Points (e.g. “As I am very good at delegating tasks, I can easily see myself leading a team of software testers in the future…”), and end your statement by asking about current initiatives and goals at the company.
In thinking about the possibilities that may lie ahead, you also might want to consider taking a personality test (I recommend 16Personalities which is based on the Myers-Briggs test), research the internet on what career paths are possible with your skills and current job.
It is generally NOT a good idea to say something like:
“Oh, I cannot imagine what happens to me tomorrow, let alone in 5 years”.
This will show you as a person who is unimaginative and not forward-thinking enough to grow with and be a good fit for the company.
5. What is your greatest weakness?
How to answer
This question ranks as the most challenging for many people. Fortunately, Mr. Simon is here to help!
Interviewers are not out to trick or trap you! They ask this question to gauge your level of self-awareness, your honesty and openness, and your capability for self-improvement.
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About Yourself
No one is perfect and your interviewer doesn't expect you to be perfect either.
While it is good to be honest and open, it will not help you to put yourself down.
What's important is to find a weakness that you have overcome. How you turned what might be considered a negative into a positive.
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About The Company
Research the company (website, social media, etc) to learn about the company culture.
What personal and professional qualities do they value?
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About The Fit
This is the time to clearly state a true weakness that you have overcome.
Be as specific as possible and stay away from vague cliches like “I work too hard.” It would be difficult for anyone to try and explain how they overcame a weakness like that
Mr. Simon emphasizes the Present-Past-Present method of responding to behavioral questions. When you are asked about your greatest weakness, you should be able to successfully use this approach as well. Here is an example of how someone might answer this question.
Present - "I have always had a fear of public speaking, and believe this may have held me back in my career, especially when having to make presentations to management."
Past - "Last year I learned about Toastmasters International and decided to join this group to help me gain confidence in myself and improve my ability to present to others in just about any situation."
Present - "By overcoming this weakness I believe that it has made me a much stronger candidate for this position, someone you can count on to make presentations to management, conduct training and communicate at a high level."
It's important to show how well you've overcome a weakness by motivating yourself and learning a new skill to grow professionally.
Pro Tip
Use this question to sell yourself!
6. What is the biggest lesson you've learned from a mistake you made?
How to answer
It’s important to know how to answer a job interview question about mistakes.
They ask questions like this to learn if you are upfront and honest about mistakes that you made.
They also want to know if you learned from your experience and how you met the challenges to improve your performance.
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About Yourself
Do your best to tell a positive story about how the mistake was made, how you dealt with it and what learned from it.
We all make mistakes from time-to-time. Answering some of the following questions will help you understand your own view of dealing with mistakes and their consequences.
For instance:
- How do you use a mistake to improve your abilities?
- Are you self-aware enough to acknowledge failure and weakness?
- Do you take smart risks?
- How do you view success, failure, and risk in general?
- Do you take responsibility for past mistakes instead of putting the blame on others?
- If the situation repeats, what would you do differently? What would you do again?
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About The Company
Before the interview, look over the job listing, research the company.
Try to think of a mistake you have made in the past that is not too closely related to the requirements of the job you are interviewing for. What kind of challenges might you face if you get the job here?
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About The Fit
It’s your opportunity to emphasize the skills or qualities you gained from your past negative experience that are important for the job you’re interviewing for now. The best way to answer a question like this is to use the Present-Past-Present method.
Start with the Present by ensuring the interviewer that even though you have made mistakes in the past, the lesson that you learned is to always carefully double-check your work and to make sure you plan ahead for any possible contingencies.
Next go back to the Past to relate a STAR story that will tell the interviewer about a time when you made a mistake but were able to make the right adjustment to turn a potential negative into a positive. You might say something like: "I was responsible to provide one of our best customers a time frame for completing an important project. In my eagerness to impress them I miscalculated how long it would take and we missed the deadline. The customer was very disappointed and we nearly lost their business. After my manager explained the problem to me I worked very hard to improve my approach to project management and meeting timelines and nothing like this has happened again."
Finally come back to the Present to tell the interviewer that you have the ability to learn from negative experiences and going forward you will approach all tasks with a mindset that will enable you to adjust quickly.
Pro Tip
Make absolutely sure that the interviewer understands that you learned from the experience.
Never blame others for what you did (however, if you were part of a team failure, you could relate this experience, just be sure to own up to your part in it).
Always be accountable for what you could have done differently in the failure. Demonstrate that you’ve had the maturity to benefit from previous “lessons learned” and you can move on with increased wisdom and competency.
7. Tell me about your work experience. What was the most interesting?
How to answer
This question lets an interviewer gauge what makes you tick and whether the job you are applying for corresponds with your areas of excitement and enthusiasm. Such a fit will earn you important points for being a viable candidate.
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About Yourself
Review the details that you shared in your resume. Select the three to five best points to highlight and relate to the position to which you're applying.
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About The Company
Carefully research the company and the job description.
Find out what duties you'll be taking on to determine which of your top skills to emphasize. Try to find out what current challenges they are trying to solve by opening this vacancy.
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About The Fit
Knowing the duties for which you will be responsible will help you identify which prior experiences to highlight.
How well you connect your previous experiences with the job requirements can tell the interviewer how prepared you are for this role and how enthusiastic you will be about your job.
Pro Tip
Do not start your answer with "as you can see from my resume," even if you have listed those skills and qualities.
Instead, tell a story showing that you can solve problems similar to their current challenges and that you are enthusiastic about this.
You can best do this through constant practice of your STARs.
8. Tell me about a stressful situation and how you dealt with it
How to answer
Stress on the job comes in many forms and from many sources including tight (perhaps impossible) deadlines, difficult bosses and co-workers, family issues, hard-to-please customers and clients and numerous other causes. There are also levels of stress ranging from the ones that are so common that we consider them normal, up to those that can really skyrocket.
Your future employer wants to know how you will behave in such times, whether you will be a helping hand or a burden.
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About Yourself
In order to form a response to this question, think back to a time when you encountered a stressful situation at work, and answer the following questions.
- Was the situation a challenge just to you personally or to your entire team?
- What was your approach to the problem and how did you handle it?
- What role if any did emotions play in the process of dealing with this situation?
- What was the outcome, was it successful?
- Did the outcome meet the company’s expectations as well as your own?
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About The Company
- What do you know about the company, where you may encounter a stressful situation?
- Are they working on a major project which is approaching a due date?
- Are they going through what appears to be a difficult time where cost-saving is a top priority? Perhaps the company culture is full of negativity and mistrust, or they have gone through massive layoffs. Is there any chance that customers are being neglected?
Any of these situations may lead to stressful times at the company, and you should try to know more about their expectations, and how realistic those expectations are.
Or, are they just a dynamic, highly agile company run by smart and creative folks, which may work excellently for some people and be confusing and mind-blowing for others?
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About The Fit
Once you have determined which STAR story will best answer this question, use the Present-Past-Present method for your response. The following is an example of how someone might apply this method.
The candidate started with the Present by telling the interviewer that she is able to rise to the challenge of the situation regardless of the level of stress that may come with an assignment.
She then went back to the Past to describe when she and her team had to hit a tight timeline for a customer that depended on the outcome of her team's work. It was an emotional time in which the team worked long, hard hours with lots of overtime. As hard as it was at the time, in the end they successfully completed the assignment and the customer was so pleased with the results that it increased its business with her company.
Finally, the candidate came back to the Present to explain how much she enjoys taking on challenges because they help her grow as a professional and she knows that she can successfully complete assignments for the company, no matter how stressful or difficult.
Pro Tip
Think of your ideal workplace environment.
- Does this company feel like it would be ideal for you?
- Do you feel excited and enthusiastic about taking on the kinds of stress you may encounter here?
- Would you prefer to work in an environment where the stress levels were lower or at least more manageable?
If you feel compatible with this company culture and enthusiastic about the challenges you expect here, this is a good chance to mention it and to show your excitement.
Explain your approach or rationale when you give your example from the past.
If you cannot remember any stressful situation with a positive outcome, you can use one with a less than positive outcome but it must be accompanied by your lessons learned and how you were able to use the lessons to help you move on.
9. Tell me about a difficult work situation and how you overcame it
How to answer
Everyone faces some awkward, difficult, and possibly even dangerous situations on the job once in a while.
The interviewers aren’t asking you this question to remind you about any stress you have experienced in the past or so that you can complain about your old job. They are asking you this question to see how you handled the situation.
It says a lot about you as an employee and as a person. They want to know how you will deal with an unprepared situation that might arise during your work tenure.
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About Yourself
Try to think of a time when outside forces created a stressful situation.
- What was the context?
- What was the challenge?
- Did you step in?
- Were you able to create a solution that could make everyone happy?
- What did you learn from that situation?
- How would you handle this situation should it happen again in the future?
Avoid examples that make you seem indecisive or uncertain, and keep your answer positive.
This is your chance to show that you have problem-solving skills. Showcase these skills using the STAR method, which will help you effectively organize your response when answering this type of question.
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About The Company
Do your research about the company. What challenges and kinds of situations may you face in your new role?
Read carefully the job description and the list of responsibilities required.
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About The Fit
Do your best to ensure your interviewer that you are a person who can identify, isolate, and solve problems.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter how big of a difficulty you had with any particular project. What really matters is the process of how you overcame that difficulty and whether you are capable of handling difficult situations in the future.
Choose your example wisely: if you're looking at a team leader or manager role, it might be better to talk about a people issue rather than technical.
If you're looking at a developer or architect role, then highlight something more technical.
Name your soft skills as well, such as project management, dealing with difficult people, pushing back requirements that were inadequate, etc. Talk only about your fits which are relevant to the job you want to get.
Pro Tip
Any company would prefer to hire a mature person, capable of rising above complex situations.
Therefore, make it a point to describe a situation in which you utilized your strong personal and professional skills. Emphasize how the situation helped you grow in different aspects of life.
10. Describe the most challenging work problem you faced in your last job
How to answer
Everyone faces problems in the workplace, it’s how we deal with them that matters most.
The problems you faced in your previous workplace actually tell future employers a lot about your problem-solving strategies and abilities.
You can expect that some employers – especially those that consider themselves high stress or those that are replacing someone that struggled with problem-solving – are going to ask you questions about workplace problems to learn more about how you reacted.
It’s a complicated question to answer because different people handle challenges in different ways.
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About Yourself
So, how should you talk about your strategy to approach tough situations?
Try to think about the actual most challenging thing you did, or just pick something that was really difficult, but you succeed at it in the end.
The situation should be real. Perhaps you went above and beyond to meet a tight deadline while taking over the responsibilities of a coworker who was out sick? Or you took a course, completed an online training, or attended seminars on a topic that was new for you, but necessary to match your qualifications to the position's requirements?
Make sure your story isn't boring: interesting is a keyword here. Use the STAR method to demonstrate your positive approach to problem-solving.
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About The Company
Take a moment to consider the role and the daily tasks you’d be engaged with.
- What kind of problems might come about?
- What difficulties can you possibly encounter because you will be working directly with clients or in a big team?
- Do you have to communicate a lot, or would problems be more technical in nature?
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About The Fit
Your answer is an opportunity to highlight your fit for the role and the work environment.
This question allows the interviewer to reflect on how you handled past challenges and use this to make predictions about your future capabilities. It might help them to realize you’re a good fit.
When employers ask such questions, they are looking for some specific details relevant to the job.
For example, if you are interviewing for a customer service role, highlight how you’ve managed to deal with a difficult situation in customer service.
On the other hand, if your future role would be very technical, you might talk about a technical challenge you’ve overcome.
Pro Tip
Sometimes it is hard to come up with “Big” challenges but that does not mean you never had to face down a problem.
I’m sure that you have solved problems in the past, you might just have to dig deep to come up with a few that you resolved to make your point.
You don't have to be alone in your job search!
Mr. Simon invites you to join the Friends of Mr. Simon Meetup Group that supports both individuals seeking their next job role and working professionals. Members of our network come together to learn and practice new skills and network with others through our regular interactive events where they establish meaningful connections and have a chance to promote their personal brand and stand out in the marketplace.
Group membership is free of charge, courtesy of Mr. Simon.
Join our Friends of Mr. Simon Meetup Group to become part of our growing and supportive community!
This page has been updated on February 23, 2024.
