Actual Interview Questions

This is a companion page to this resource.

Directions: To add your question, just click on the word EDIT above.

Contributions are no longer being received here…but feel free to email them to Miguel Guhlin at m g u h l i n at g m a i l dot c o m

Here’s my two cents as a technical person who has gone through many interviews.

The number one best thing you can do when interviewing for a technical position in my opinion is test the person and ask technical questions related to the job description on the test. If they will be working with HTML a lot, ask questions about HTML tags on the test. If they will be using Linux in their job, ask questions about Linux commands on the test. Etc. etc. I am always surprised when I go on interviews and people just rely on asking me regular interview questions and reading my resume. The best measure of a technical person is their ability to take a test on their area of expertise and do well.

I found a great series specifically for IT Managers that need to conduct interviews for technical jobs. Here is a link to “Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java, J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle interview questions! (IT Job Interview series)” on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Conducting-Programmer-Job-Interview-interview/dp/0974599328/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/103-5221934-2477448

When I got the job I have now I had to take a long test with the other candidates that asked me Java questions, MySQL questions, and also a lot of questions relating to how I work with others, etc. These tests are hard, but if you really know your stuff it’s great, because it separates you from the posers right away - something an interview can’t do as quickly or as well.

Individual Interview Questions

• Sample question goes here. Separate questions by putting them on their own line and putting an asterisk at the front. The asterisk creates a bullet point. Thanks!

Interview Questions for Technology Integration Facilitator Position

Set 1

1. What strategies do you use to encourage teachers to inform and plan with you?
2. How did using technology make the content more meaningful to students?
3. What computer competency from the NC Standard Course of Study were the students learning?
4. What strategies do you use to encourage students and teachers to use technology to complete school assignments, and for personal information needs?
5. What activities have you organized or facilitated to provide additional technology opportunities for students?
6. How do you keep up-to-date in a rapidly changing profession such as yours?
7. In which areas have our students improved most through technology-enhanced instruction?

Set 2

1. If you were designing professional learning for teachers in San Antonio ISD what would you identify as the most important components of effective professional development for educational technology?
2. What strategies do you use to encourage teachers to inform and plan with you?
3. Think of a particular core-content project you have worked on with students. How did using technology make the content more meaningful to students?
4. Consider one project your students were working on. How did you embed technology competencies from the Technology Applications:TEKS in what students were learning?
5. What strategies do you use to encourage students and teachers to use technology to complete school assignments, and for personal information needs?
6. What activities have you organized or facilitated to provide additional technology opportunities for students?
7. How do you keep up-to-date in a rapidly changing profession such as yours?
8. In which areas have our students improved most through technology-enhanced instruction?

Set 3

1. Please relate how your work experience has prepared you for this position.
2. How would you go about supporting a content-area teacher (e.g. social studies, math, Reading/ELA) at grades 6–8 to integrate technology into the curriculum?
3. How would you help a teacher move a lesson from a Level of Technology Implementation (LOTI) 3 to a 4 or 5?
4. What are some common forms of assessing technology integration at the campus and at the district level? How would you facilitate the use of those state-required measures at the campus level with a site-based decision-making committee?
5. Your job will often involve travel within the district from campus to campus. You will also be required at times to work from 4:30–7:30 pm and/or on Saturdays. Do you have a reliable form of transportation (e.g. car) and do you foresee any difficulty in completing the requirements of the job?
6. Over the last year, we have seen an explosion of free, open source technologies for use in K-12 education. Among them are server-side software products known as content management systems, whether for web site management or blogs. Please share your experiences with these systems, both from a technical standpoint and how to apply them to instructional settings.
7. Please describe your experiences working with online databases, as both a user and creator.
8. Maintaining confidential data integrity is a key responsibility of this position. Do you foresee any obstacles to maintaining information confidential?
9. Scenario: You are training a group of 15 classroom teachers after hours. A couple of teachers make the comment that they are attending your session only to get their choice hours. They also stat that they are too busy covering what is required on the District’s scope and sequence and do not have time to use technology. How would you respond?
10. In a situation where you had more work than you could finish by the set deadline, what did you do?
11. In a situation where you disagreed with the course of action your supervisor had decided upon, what steps did you take to make an alternate course of action known?
12. If chosen for the position, how soon would you be able to start?
13. Do you have any questions for us?

Interview Questions for Technology Integration Coordinator

1. Please introduce yourself to the group, what you see yourself doing in this position, and how your portfolio items match the job announcement. Note to Interviewer: Portfolio should be organized, CD-ROM or web-enabled and demonstrate both technology proficiency and an overall philosophy of how to best approach curriculum-technology integration.
2. Please share your approach to the integration of technology into constructivist approaches such as problem-based learning and inquiry-based learning.
3. Online professional development has become a popular trend for school districts. What are the characteristics of successful online professional development? Use your own experience to illustrate those characteristics.
4. You’re facilitating professional development for classroom teachers. The focus is on developing content-area lessons that employ technology. How would you go about assessing the level of technology implementation (LOTI) for each activity?
5. How would you facilitate the development of curriculum addressing the K-5 TA:TEKS in alignment with the Texas StaR Chart?
6. In a situation where you disagreed with a course of action chosen by your supervisor, how did you handle it?
7. In a situation where you had more work than could be completed in the time allotted, what did you do?
8. How would you prepare administrators to support their campus staff’s efforts at technology integration as aligned to NCLB, Texas Long Range Plan for Technology and Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills?

From School District Interview Forms

Set 1 From a Texas School District

Interview Questions

Q1 This job requires a lot of collaboration. Give an example of collaborative work or projects you have done in the past?

Scale of 1–10

Q2 You have a 3rd grade teacher who is very reluctant to use technology in her classroom. What might you do to convince her that it would bring value to her students?

Scale of 1–10

Q3 What special quality do you bring to this position and how will it impact student learning?

Scale of 1–10

Q 4 As an campus instructional technology specialist, what are some good alternatives for providing support and staff development, other than in service workshops?

Scale of 1–10

Q5 The “one computer classroom” is a prevalent teaching environment in the LCISD schools. What strategies, as an instructional technologist, would you employ to help a teacher successfully use technology in their classroom?

Scale of 1–10

Q6 As an instructional technologist, is it more important to focus on the teacher or the student learner when it comes to integrating technology into the curriculum?

Scale of 1–10

Q7 What campus or campuses are you willing to work at?

Interview Sequence:

Topic - Time

1. Candidate / team introductions 5

2. Candidate PowerPoint presentation 10

3. Team Q & A over PowerPoint presentation 5

4. Team questions for candidate 15

5. Team post interview conference 10

Total 45min

Set 2 Texas School District

1. What are your most used technology resources?
2. What do you consider to be your best professional asset?
3. What do you think is more important: Giving your attention to details or getting the job done?
4. How do you handle stress in your job?
5. What do you consider to be your greatest weakness?
6. Which application in the MS Office Professional suite do you consider to be the best for instruction? Why?
7. Could you assist a classroom teacher in desktop publishing using MS Word?
8. As a classroom teacher, do you like to bring in special lessons that interest you or do you or do you like to bring in only TEKS appropriate lessons?
9. What technology strategy would you suggest to a teacher who has one computer in her room and wants to use Excel to teach math to her students?
10. If you were assigned the task of delivering technology staff development training to all classroom teachers in ten schools, how would you go about organizing yourself to get that job done?
11. Have you ever delivered a technololgy related staff development workshop to teachers?
12. When conducting a training workshop for teachers, what is the most important to get done in the allotted time?
13. How do you see Instruction and learning theory helping to optimize the use of technology in the classroom?
14. What was the best book you’ve read this year?
15. What do you see is the scope of an instructional technologist position?
16. What is desktop publishing?
17. What can you tell us about adult learning styles?
18. You have 20 people in a staff development session. There are 3 that continue to talk while you are demonstrating how to use a software application tool. What would you do to redirect this type of behavior without embarrassing them?
19. A participant in your staff development session tells you that they already know how to use the software application and would rather surf the Internet. What would you say to this participant?
20. You are working with a teacher and her students. The task is to teach students how to brainstorm keywords to find information at the Yahooligans site but suddenly the Internet becomes inaccessible. What would you do?
21. At one of your assigned campus sites you find that there are two teachers that will not allow you to help them. How would you convince them to allow you to help them?
22. What do you perceive as your best interpersonal quality, and how does this quality support the role of an instructional technologist?
23. Why did you apply for this job?
24. As an Instructional Technologist you are selling a product. In your opinion what is the product? What would be your best salesman/saleswoman technique?
25. The role of an Instructional Technologist requires long hours and sometimes working at home. How do you feel about this?
26. Have you helped others integrate technology into the curriculum and if so, how?
27. Teachers learn how to use technology in many ways. How do you think teachers learn technology best?
28. In your opinion, what qualifies you to train adults to integrate technology into their teaching?
29. What professional staff development presentations have you recently given that are related to technology?
30. What strategies would you use to insure that a reluctant teacher would begin to use their new instructional workstation?
31. Do you have a problem working after hours during the week, or on Saturday, presenting technology staff development training sessions to teachers?
32. Which software applications are you the most comfortable with personally?

Set 3 - Texas Interview Questions

1. Tell us about yourself and your background
2. Please describe to us what your understanding of this job is- ie what you will be doing and what are the expectations of the district from you.
3. Tell us about your job or jobs you have held in the last 18 months…what were your responsibilities?
4. Do you have any computer service / repair experience- - give specifics
5. Tell us about the experience you have in the area of classroom service and repair.
6. What network experience do you have – i.e. Novell or Windows NT – Give examples of what you have done
7. Tell us about you Internet Skills- at what level are they and why?
   • Beginner
   • Intermediate
   • Advanced
8. You have demonstrated to and trained 4 teachers on a new piece of software- you have repeated the training 4 times- one of the teachers can not run the software correctly- what do you do?
9. Have you ever worked in an educational environment – i.e. school or administrative building . If Yes – Where?
10. This assignment requires travel to several school buildings. Is that a problem?
11. Please tell us about any on-line e-learning classes that you have completed or taught
12. Please tell us about any experience with e-learning you have :- ie Blackboard or Web CT or any other on-line software. ie setting up a course or teaching an on-line class
13. Please tell us about any experience with Interactive Video Conferencing (IVC) you have :- ie set up classes- taught classes-formal training- equipment set up- configutratuion etc.
14. What IVC brand of equipment are you familiar with?
15. Describe your experience in the area of classroom tech training. Please give specific examples of where you have trained and software examples.
16. You may be required to assist school personnel with Student Management software. Describe your experience with Student Information Systems.
17. You may be required to assist school personnel with Student Management software. Describe your experience with Open District from Chancery software.
18. You are working on a minor service problem for Mr. Keller. Mrs. Johnson comes to area in Mr. Keller’s room and has just verbally attacked you in front of 5 students because her computer is not working. . She has accused you of problems that have nothing to do with you- It is a user error- ( her)- how will you deal with this situation. Please be specific.
19. Do you have any experience with GroupWise/Outlook – e-mail?
20. Describe your experience with imaging software i.e. Ghost from Symantic
21. Describe your experience with imaging software i.e. ZenWorks from Novell
22. What are you doing to stay current in the technology field?
23. Describe your experience in the area of help desk or support#Tell us about any training manuals or books that you may have developed.
24. Do you have your own transportation?
25. Are you willing to work 4–10’s or some irregular hours? Weekends -if necessary to get the job done
26. Tell us how about your experience with Crystal Reports. Please give specific examples or the type of reports you have created and using what database.
27. If you have used Crystal Reports-Give us examples of the types of reports you have written:
28. In this position you will be dealing with confidential parent and student information – ie student data- parent data for example- Is there any problem if you were required to have a security clearance.
29. What are your long term goals.ie for the next year-3 years
30. What was the most recent book you have read and how did it affect you?
31. Describe a recent high stress situation you have been under at your present job. Explain how you resolved the situation
32. What can you do for the Durango School District that another applicant could not do?
33. Assume that you have 10 principals who want a WinSchool report today at 3:00. You are currently working on that project. The curriculum director calls and wants a report at 2:00. Then the superintendent calls and needs a report for the school board by 1:00.
34. It is now 8:45 am. How would you handle this situation?
35. What are your biggest accomplishments- either personal or business related or both
36. What is the funniest thing that has happened to you at a job you currently hold or in the past?
37. Tell us about the most difficult thing you have done (either personal or work related) and how you accomplished it.
38. In the past year new technologies have appeared; including Wiki’s, blogs and Podcasting. Tell us about your experience with each of these. ( second part of the question below)
39. Give us an example of how you might incorporate these new technologies into the curriculum.
40. What qualities do you think a supervisor / boss should have?
41. What is your greatest strength and some of your most outstanding qualities?
42. OK…what about the opposite? What is one area you feel you could improve on?
43. What personal characteristics do you think are necessary for success in your life?
44. What will your references say about you?
45. Why do you want this job?
46. How do you have fun at work?
47. Tell us what you know about the Durango School District.
48. What date are you available to start if you were offered the position.
49. You have the next 10 minutes to teach us something. Select any topic-Assume that you do not know the level of expertise of each of us. You will have approximately 3 min to prepare.
50. Teaching example was:
51. Do you have any question for us??: