50 COMMON INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Review these typical interview questions and think about how you would answer them. Read the questions listed; you will also find some strategy suggestions with it. 

 1. Tell me about yourself? 
 Ans : The most often asked question in interviews. You need to have a short statement prepared in your mind. Be careful that it does not sound rehearsed. Limit it to work-related items unless instructed otherwise. Talk about things you have done and jobs you have held that relate to the position you are interviewing for. Start with the item farthest back and work up to the present. 
 2. Why did you leave your last job? 
 Ans: Stay positive regardless of the circumstances. Never refer to a majorproblem with management and never speak ill of supervisors, co-workers or the organization. If you do, you will be the one looking bad. Keep smiling and talk about leaving for a positive reason such as an opportunity, a chance to do something special or other forward-looking reasons. 


 3. What experience do you have in this field?
 Ans: Speak about specifics that relate to the position you are applying for. If you do not have specific experience, get as close as you can. 


 4. Do you consider yourself successful?
 Ans:You should always answer yes and briefly explain why. A good explanation is that you have set goals, and you have met some and are on track to achieve the others. 


 5. What do co-workers say about you? 
Ans: Be prepared with a quote or two from co-workers. Either a specific statement or a paraphrase will work. Jill Clark, a co-worker at Smith Company, always said I was the hardest workers she had ever known. It is as powerful as Jill having said it at the interview herself. 


 6. What do you know about this organization?
 This question is one reason to do some research on the organization before the interview. Find out where they have been and where they are going. What are the current issues and who are the major players? 


 7.. What have you done to improve your knowledge in the last year? Try to include improvement activities that relate to the job. A wide variety of activities can be mentioned as positive self-improvement. Have some good ones handy to mention. 

 8. Are you applying for other jobs? Be honest but do not spend a lot of time in this area. Keep the focuson this job and what you can do for this organization. Anything else is a distraction. 


 9. Why do you want to work for this organization? This may take some thought and certainly, should be based on the research you have done on the organization. Sincerity is extremely important here and will easily be sensed. Relate it to your long-term career goals. 


 10. Do you know anyone who works for us? Be aware of the policy on relatives working for the organization. This can affect your answer even though they asked about friends not relatives. Be careful to mention a friend only if they are well thought of. 


 11. What is your Expected Salary? A loaded question. A nasty little game that you will probably lose if you answer first. So, do not answer it. Instead, say something like, That's a tough question. Can you tell me the range for this position? In most cases, the interviewer, taken off guard, will tell you. If not, say that it can depend on the details of the job. Then give a wide range. 


 12. Are you a team player? You are, of course, a team player. Be sure to have examples ready. Specifics that show you often perform for the good of the team rather than for yourself are good evidence of your team attitude. Do not brag, just say it in a matter-of-fact tone. This is a key point.. 


 13. How long would you expect to work for us if hired? Specifics here are not good. Something like this should work: I'd like it to be a long time. Or As long as we both feel I'm doing a good job. 


 14. Have you ever had to fire anyone? How did you feel about that? This is serious. Do not make light of it or in any way seem like you like to fire people. At the same time, you will do it when it is the right thing to do. When it comes to the organization versus the individual who has created a harmful situation, you will protect the organization. Remember firing is not the same as layoff or reduction in force. 


 15. What is your philosophy towards work? The interviewer is not looking for a long or flowery dissertation here. Do you have strong feelings that the job gets done? Yes. That's the type of answer that works best here. Short and positive, showing a benefit to the organization.


 16. If you had enough money to retire right now, would you? Answer yes if you would. But since you need to work, this is the type of work you prefer. Do not say yes if you do not mean it. 


 17. Have you ever been asked to leave a position? If you have not, say no. If you have, be honest, brief and avoid saying negative things about the people or organization involved. 


 18. Explain how you would be an asset to this organization ? You should be anxious for this question. It gives you a chance to highlight your best points as they relate to the position being discussed. Give a little advance thought to this relationship. . 


 19. Why should we hire you? Point out how your assets meet what the organization needs. Do not mention any other candidates to make a comparison..

20. Tell me about a suggestion you have made ? Have a good one ready. Be sure and use a suggestion that was accepted and was then considered successful. One related to the type of work applied for is a real plus. 


 21. What irritates you about co-workers? This is a trap question. Think real hard but fail to come up with anything that irritates you. A short statement that you seem to get along with folks is great. 

Organic Carbon Compounds Emitted By Trees Affect Air Quality

Paul Wennberg, the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering and director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science at Caltech, and John Seinfeld, the Louis E. Nohl Professor and professor of chemical engineering, have been studying the role of biogenic emissions—organic carbon compounds given off by plants and trees—in the atmospheric chemical reactions that result in the creation of aerosols. "If you mix emissions from the city with emissions from plants, they interact to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere," Wennberg notes. While there's been plenty of attention paid to the effect of emissions from cars and manufacturing, less is understood about what happens to biogenic emissions, especially in places where there are relatively few man-made emissions. That situation is the focus of the research that led to this Science paper. "What we're interested in," Wennberg explains, "is what happens to the chemicals produced by trees once they are emitted into the atmosphere." In these studies, the research team focused on a chemical called isoprene, which is given off by many deciduous trees. "The king emitters are oaks," Wennberg says. "And the isoprene they emit is one of the reasons that the Smoky Mountains appear smoky." Isoprene is no minor player in atmospheric chemistry, Wennberg notes. "There is much more isoprene emitted to the atmosphere than all of the gases—gasoline, industrial chemicals—emitted by human activities, with the important exceptions of methane and carbon dioxide," he says. "And isoprene only comes from plants. They make hundreds of millions of tons of this chemical . . . for reasons that we still do not fully understand." "Much of the emission of isoprene occurs where anthropogenic emissions are limited," adds Caltech graduate student Fabien Paulot, the paper's first author. "The chemistry is very poorly understood." Once released into the atmosphere, isoprene gets "oxidized or chewed on" by free-radical oxidants such as OH, explains Wennberg. It is this chemistry that is the focus of this new study. In particular, the research was initiated to understand how the oxidation of isoprene can lead to formation of atmospheric particulate matter, so-called secondary organic aerosol. "A small fraction of the isoprene becomes secondary organic aerosol," Seinfeld notes, "but because isoprene emissions are so large, even this small fraction is important." Up until now, the chemical pathways from isoprene to aerosol were not known. Wennberg, Seinfeld, and their colleagues discovered that this aerosol likely forms from chemicals known as an epoxides. The name is apt. "These epoxides are nature's glue," says Wennberg. And, much like the epoxy you buy in a hardware store—which requires the addition of an acid for the compound to turn into glue—the epoxides found in the atmosphere also need an acidic kick in order to become sticky. "When these epoxides bump into particles that are acidic, they make glue," Wennberg explains. "The epoxides precipitate out of the atmosphere and stick to the particles, growing them and resulting in lowered visibility in the atmosphere." Because the acidity of the aerosols is generally higher in the presence of anthropogenic activities, the efficiency of converting the epoxides to aerosol is likely higher in polluted environments, illustrating yet another complex interaction between emissions from the biosphere and from humans. "Particles in the atmosphere have been shown to impact human health, as they are small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs of people. Also, aerosols impact Earth's climate through the scattering and absorption of solar radiation and through serving as the nuclei on which clouds form. So it is important to know where particles come from," notes Seinfeld. The research team was able to make this scientific leap forward thanks to their development of a new type of chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS), led by coauthor and Caltech graduate student John Crounse. "These new CIMS methods open up a very wide range of possibilities for the study of new sets of compounds that scientists have been largely unable to measure previously, mainly because they decompose when analyzed with traditional techniques." In general, molecules identified and quantified using mass spectroscopy must first be converted to charged ions. They are then directed into an electric field, where the ions are sorted by mass. The problem with traditional ionization techniques is that delicate molecules, such as those produced in the oxidation of isoprene, generally fragment during the ionization process, making their identification difficult or impossible. "This new method was originally developed in order to allow scientists to make atmospheric measurements from airplanes. It is able to ionize gasses, even fragile peroxide compounds, while still preserving information about the size or mass of the original molecule," says Wennberg. That makes determining the individual gases in a complex mixture much easier—especially when, as it turned out, you're looking at a chemical you weren't expecting to find. Wennberg and colleagues also used oxygen isotopes—oxygen atoms with different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus, and thus different masses—to gain insight into the chemical mechanism yielding epoxides. Epoxides have remained unidentified so far because they have the same mass as another chemical that had been anticipated to form in isoprene oxidation, peroxide. "The oxygen isotopes separated the peroxides from epoxides and further showed that as the epoxides form, OH is recycled to the atmosphere," comments Paulot. "Since OH is the atmosphere detergent, cleaning the atmosphere of many chemicals, the recycling has important implications for the overall oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere." The identification of a major photochemical pathway to formation of epoxides helps to explain just how tree emissions of organic carbon compounds influence the air in both city and rural settings. While trees aren't exactly the "killers" that Ronald Reagan was once so famously derided for calling them, their isoprene emission levels can—and often probably should—"be a part of the criteria we use when buying and planting trees in a polluted urban setting," notes Wennberg. In fact, he points out, the South Coast Air Quality Management District in Southern California already does this with its list of "approved" trees that don't emit large amounts of organic carbon compounds into the atmosphere. In addition to Wennberg, Paulot, Crounse, and Seinfeld, other authors on the Science paper are Henrik Kjaergaard of the University of Otago in New Zealand; former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Andreas Kürten, now at Goethe University in Germany; and Caltech postdoctoral scholar Jason St. Clair. The work described in the Science article was supported by Caltech trustee William Davidow and by grants from the Office of Science, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Royal Society of New Zealand, and NASA.