[Jackeline]

Hello Everyone,

I am an Administrative Assistant at a junior college and would love to get input from everyone on how to create essay questions for an interview. My reason behind this, is that if I were to ever leave my position (whether it was going to a new position or a new job), I want to be part of the interview process to ensure the college hires the right person to take my place.

I feel that an essay question would be very helpful, but I have no clue on what to include. So far, I only have two questions, but feel they are weak. I would love your input on my questions: what's good, not good, how I could change the question, what other questions I could ask...whatever! I am open!

Thank you for your input!

Below are my two questions:

1) This position requires you to deal with confiential documents and issues on a daily basis. How comfortable are you dealing with confientiality and what steps do you take in order to keep it?

2) What do you think are the most important characteristics and abilities a person must possess to become a successful Administrative Assistant? How do you rate yourself in these areas?

[LisaOlsen]

Originally Posted by Jackeline

Hello Everyone,

I am an Administrative Assistant at a junior college and would love to get input from everyone on how to create essay questions for an interview. My reason behind this, is that if I were to ever leave my position (whether it was going to a new position or a new job), I want to be part of the interview process to ensure the college hires the right person to take my place.

I feel that an essay question would be very helpful, but I have no clue on what to include. So far, I only have two questions, but feel they are weak. I would love your input on my questions: what's good, not good, how I could change the question, what other questions I could ask...whatever! I am open!

Thank you for your input!

Below are my two questions:

1) This position requires you to deal with confiential documents and issues on a daily basis. How comfortable are you dealing with confientiality and what steps do you take in order to keep it?

2) What do you think are the most important characteristics and abilities a person must possess to become a successful Administrative Assistant? How do you rate yourself in these areas?

Hi Jackeline,

Essay questions can be very useful. Your two questions are good, but in order to make them real "essay" questions, I would suggest rewording them a bit. (I teach part time at our junior college). Essay questions should prompt well-thought out answers applying principles and ideas that reflect a solid understanding of the information (in this case, qualities that make an outstanding admin). I might change the questions to read like this:

1. This position requires you to deal with confidential documents and issues daily. Explain how you determine whether information is confidential. How can maintaining confidentiality build your credibility?

2. Demonstrating ethics in the workplace is one of the most valuable qualities of today's successful Administrative Assistant. What are the characteristics of an ethical assistant? How do you demonstrate those qualities in the workplace?


It's important to determine ahead of time exactly what criteria you are looking for in the essay answers. Essays can be very difficult to "grade" because they can be very subjective. Essay questions can be helpful however, if you are looking for how an admin develops written correspondence, their grammar skills, spelling skills ,etc.
and their general ability to understand the question and put express themselves concisely and intelligently. For example, in my Office Procedures class I teach, I do a written essay (they can type it) on the final. I give certain amount of points for the content (how they generally used their knowledge to answer the question), points for spelling and points for grammar since all are important aspects of being successful in the business setting.

Good luck!

[Tess Price, PhD]

Hi Jackeline!

I like this idea of asking applicants to write an essay question. It would give you opportunity to assess their writing skills, a critical skill for an Administrative Assistant.

As for wording your questions, I have a simple suggestion. When interviewing applicants it is common to ask them "Behavioral Questions." These are questions where the applicant describes previous situations and how they handled it. The idea is that past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior.

Consider wording your first question in this way:
1. This position requires you to deal with confidential documents and issues daily. Tell me about a time when you were required to handle confidential documents and issues. What steps did you take to maintain confidenitality?

2. I actually recommend Lisa Olsen's suggestion, it is written as a behavioral question.

I agree with Lisa that essay's can be subjective. I would also like to point out that some people will not respond well to an essay question, so I wouldn't overburden the applicant with more than the two you already have. You can use the interview to ask additional behavioral questions. If you need help writing behavioral questions, I would be happy to assist you.

Dr. Tess

[Jackeline]

Thank you both for your suggestions! My questions are mainly to see writing and problem solving skills of a potential applicant so your ideas are very helpful! I also did not think about having too many questions; I know I would be overwhelmed with more than two questions. =)

Thanks again!!

[pattykakes]

Originally Posted by Jackeline

Hello Everyone,

I am an Administrative Assistant at a junior college and would love to get input from everyone on how to create essay questions for an interview. My reason behind this, is that if I were to ever leave my position (whether it was going to a new position or a new job), I want to be part of the interview process to ensure the college hires the right person to take my place.

I feel that an essay question would be very helpful, but I have no clue on what to include. So far, I only have two questions, but feel they are weak. I would love your input on my questions: what's good, not good, how I could change the question, what other questions I could ask...whatever! I am open!

Thank you for your input!

Below are my two questions:

1) This position requires you to deal with confiential documents and issues on a daily basis. How comfortable are you dealing with confientiality and what steps do you take in order to keep it?

2) What do you think are the most important characteristics and abilities a person must possess to become a successful Administrative Assistant? How do you rate yourself in these areas?

You really should be working with your HR department if you are going to make changes or start a new set of interview questions.

If you are going to do essay questions you need to be able to mark them so there is consistency if you have more than 1 applicant.

You will need to sit down and make a list of all the points you want to see in the answer.

You need to be very careful to make the questions and answers impartial.

[Jackeline]

Thank you pattykakes for your suggestions!

[ehammond]

When we were interviewing for an administrtive assistant I was able to participate in the process and I found that the questions I asked were generally based on my own experiences. For example, I am involved in a lot of meeting planning both on and off site. I asked the candidates to tell me how they go about planning a meeting. I set up the question like so:

"Your boss has just come to you and says he needs to have an off site meeting with the 5 members of the sales team who will need to fly in from California along with the 6 members of the inside sales team here in town. Walk me through how you would plan this."

Hope that helps.

[Jackeline]

Thank you ehammond! I like your suggestion!! Thank you.