Hard work, perseverance, and quality matter. If you want to achieve excellence in life, you ought to innovate and spend those long midnight hours stretching your mind and body to work for a longer duration. Such was the dedication of the two professors of Northwestern University of the United States, that they founded this billion-dollar company in the year 1983. ZS Associates is a highly successful company, primarily involved in offering consulting, technology, and software services to its clients. It is an employer to more than 10,000 employees that work for this prestigious company from the United States of America, Europe, and Asia.
It is no wonder that working for ZS associates is a dream come true for most job seekers. It not only offers an exceptional work-life balance but also allows its employees to enjoy the high incentives and additional allowances. The interview process of ZS associates is quite technical and you will certainly be asked a few in-depth questions. Thus, prepare sincerely for the interview process and read a lot of frequently asked interview questions. Below is a set of 21 best interview questions, that are asked in the interview sessions of ZS associates.
21 Best Interview Questions To Study
1. Express Yourself.
An interview session begins with this question, wherein you are requested by your interviewer to broadly share your name, educational qualifications, and work experience. You are requested to draft a chronological answer for this question and express it with confidence and desire. Well begun is half done, so give a serious preparation to this question.
2. Assume That There Are Seven Workers In A Team and Three Of Them Fell Ill. They All Worked For 4 Hours A Day. How Many Additional Workers Are Needed Assuming That They Work For 2 Hours A Day?
This is a quantitative aptitude question, which requires you to state the number of extra hours that you and your team members would work. The total work is for 28 man-hours (7 workers x 4 hours/day). Since three of them fell ill, the reduced productivity would be 16 man-hours (4 workers x 4 hours/day). The balance of 12 man-hours would need to be performed by working extra. Since the new workers would now work for 2 hours in a day, and there is a need for 12 man-hours then a total of 6 (12 man-hours/2 hours per day) new workers would be needed.
3. Describe A Situation When You Worked On A Project Of Which You Had Minimal Knowledge.
This is a behavior-based interview question, in which you are given a specific situation and requested to share your approach towards the same. Just be genuine and share a real situation that you faced while working for any company.
4. There Are So Many Pink, Blue and Red Elephants In Asia. Which One Is Your Favourite?
ZS Associates is a multi-national corporation and only a few job vacancies witness an encouraging response. Thus, an interview session will always be tough, and there will always be questions that would make your feel uncomfortable. This is a partially-true statement. Naturally, elephants are always grey in color. However, in Asia, there are various rituals and festivals in which elephants are dressed differently. This gives an impression, that they are of varied colors. This is a personality evaluating question and just share your opinion.
5. How Do You Handle An Ethical Dilemma While Working For Your Employer?
This is a tricky interview question. An ethical dilemma is a situation of a conundrum in which you are supposed to choose between two equally likely situations, that pertain to the social causes and concerns of your employer. In simple words, it is a catch 22 situation, wherein either you can support your own employer or go for the benefit of society. For example, your company wants to undertake a project in a green area and that would lead to the cutting of thousands of trees.
There is no ideal response to this question, and you can read out your mind aloud. However, if you still want an answer, just go with your employer and show how committed you are.
6. Where Is The Headquarter Of Our Company and Who Is Our CEO?
An interviewer is always interested in knowing, that whether or not you are aware of the historical facts and information related to the company. This simply depicts your interest and seriousness towards the company. This company maintains its headquarters in Evanston, Illinois and its current CEO is Mr. Pratap Khedkar (at the time of writing of this article)
7. Assume, You Are Stuck In A Free Falling Elevator. What Will Be Your First Thought?
This is a situation-based interview question, wherein your response would help an interviewer to assess your personality, thinking, and approach. In the instant case, this is a hypothetical situation, and in a free-falling elevator, you will certainly feel weightless. This would be a new state for your body and you will feel anxious and your breath rate would be hyper-elevated. In such a situation, you will be afraid and fear death. As an ideal response, you must look for ways to escape yourself from such a messy situation. Further, you are requested not to show your haplessness or nervousness while answering this question.
8. We Are A Global Company and Have Several Clients. Thus, We Will Require You To Multi-task. How Will You Prioritize?
This is a common interview question. Every established business organization would certainly offer you a variety of business tasks that needs to be performed in a single business day. In order to complete them effectively and before the deadline, it is necessary that you have a developed prioritization technique. You might arrange your tasks on the basis of their difficulty levels or simply on the basis of time consumption. Whatever it is, just share an original response with your interviewer.
9. What Do You Look For In A Team?
Nowadays, almost all business organizations prefer to work in a team setup, due to increased productivity and efficiency in operations. These teams are framed by dividing the employees on the basis of their education levels, skills, and nature of tasks to be performed. Through this question, an interviewer wants to know what are the various qualities or attributes that you prefer your team members to have.
10. Failures At Workplaces Are Common. How Do You Manage It?
Failure at the workplace refers to an inconducive activity in which you are not able to deliver the performance that was expected or desired from you. Despite the fact that success is hard to achieve, and failures are quite common, people tend to get depressed, start lacking confidence, and feel low after facing a failure. This question requires you to state the strategy that you use to manage your failures.
11. Describe Yourself In One Word?
This is a personality evaluating question and you are required to summarize your whole personality using a single word. It is always recommended that you use a word that correctly defines your personality and is corporate-friendly. Some commonly used words are, hardworking, supportive, dedicated, committed, loyal, persevering, etc.
12. What Motivates You?
This is a common interview question that requires you to share some of the motivational factors that prompt you to work hard at your workplace. These factors are personal in nature and are heavily influenced by your personal interests, desires, and financial conditions. Hence, it is recommended that you always offer an original answer instead of giving a generic answer.
13. What Is The Relevance Of Satisfaction of Customers In The Context Of Businesses.
Customers are the essence of business organizations and the very basic reason for their existence. It is only through the satisfaction of clients that an organization could achieve success and grab a higher market share. As an ideal response to this question, state that customer satisfaction is of prime importance in today’s competitive world and an organization must strive hard to achieve it, by offering quality products at reasonable prices.
14. ZS Associates Believe In Quality Operations and Procedures. How Do You Interpret The Term “Quality”?
This is a word-based interview question, that requires you to interpret the word “quality”. There could be simply innumerable interpretations of this term, however, you are expected to share your own version. In a general sense, quality is achieved, when an employee delivers a performance that leads to client satisfaction and is at par with the established standards.
15. How Do You Prefer To Work – Individually or In A Team?
This is a tricky interview question, and you are required to choose between the two options. However, you will never be safe with your selection, no matter what you choose. This is because, if you prefer to choose “individual” then you will be construed as an employee who can not maintain camaraderie and harmony with his or her colleagues. On the other hand, if you will choose “team” then you are an employee who can not work with minimum supervision and guidance. Thus, justify your selection, and simply move ahead.
16. What Are Your Major Strengths and Weaknesses?
This is a common interview question and is frequently asked in several interview sessions held across the world. The best way to answer this question is by analyzing your personality and attitude in depth by conducting deep scrutiny of yourself. Post this, analyze the findings, and write down at least three of your strengths and weaknesses. Share them with your interviewer.
17. Describe Your Best Boss and Worst Boss.
We all work at several business organizations, and meet a lot of bosses during our professional careers. Some of them are quite good and helpful, while some are simply not able to make a cut in our good books. There is always a basis or a logic that influences this segregation. Through this question, an interviewer wants to know that basis. Be thoughtful, and share a well-drafter answer.
18. When Can You Start?
There is nothing technical in this interview question, and you are simply required to share your expected date of start. However, still, a few students make a mess of it and interpret this question as a guarantee for selection, which is unfortunately not. Hence, keep your focus and share your well-calculated genuine date of start.
19. What Are Your Salary Expectations?
It is a common habit of the interviewers to ask this question during an interview session itself. There is nothing technical in this question, but it certainly has the ability to reduce your selection chances. Hence, always share a salary in a bracket, which is based on some extensive and useful research of the industry to which you belong. Further, always try to hover around the mean salary and deviate in a limit, which is not more than 10% to 15% of the mean salary.
20. You Must Have Applied At Our Competitors. Why You Chose Us?
It is a common interview question. Through this question, an interviewer wants to know your level of seriousness and commitment towards the business organization you prefer to work with. The official website of the company is the best source for the preparation of this interview question, and you are requested to note down a few relevant facts, historical information, and achievements of the company. Post this, just couple your notings with your personal interests in the company, and you are good to go.
21. Do You Have Any Questions For Us?
This is a common interview question that is used to conclude an interview session. This is the last interview question, and post this you can go home as your big day has finally come to an end. Through this question, an interviewer wants to know about your apprehensions or doubts that you might be having in regards to the business organization, its work culture, the work timings, etc. It is necessary to ask a few relevant counter questions in response to this question. Please read the model questions mentioned below for reference.
Model Questions
- What are the various work timings that are followed by the company in the various shifts?
- Is it the policy of the company to offer paid leaves to its employees, especially in the situations of maternity/paternity?
- Please share a list of all the incentives and allowances that are offered by the company to its employees.
References
- https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2021.naacl-main.160/
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13854046.2019.1696409
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Sandeep Bhandari is the founder of PrepMyCareer.com website.
I am a full-time professional blogger, a digital marketer, and a trainer. I love anything related to the Web, and I try to learn new technologies every day.
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