Communication Interview Questions and Answers

There are many different ways to say you have good communication skills like-

• I am confident and have professional speaking abilities.
• I can speak in public, to groups, or via electronic media.
• I have excellent presentation and speaking skills.
• I am a persuasive speaker and an empathic listener.

By your answer, you have to convince your interviewer that from your past experience you have gained strong communication skills like “Through my past work experience and education, I have gained and developed strong communication skills and can clearly convey my points to different types of people. In any conversation, it is very important to listen to other perspectives too which aids in my ability to understand a situation.”

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Both communications are a way of exchanging ideas, feelings, messages, thoughts, information, and opinions and have their own pluses and minuses. It totally depends upon the situation that one should opt which medium of communication.

Let’s look at some of the important differences between these two

You know why we have two ears and one tongue so that we can listen more and speak less. If you are not a good listener you will never be able to get another person's point of view.

Below are reasons why being a good listener would be good for you

• Listening raises trust level- When someone tries to show the effort to listen, they accept your interest. This makes them more comfortable towards you in sharing things and being open.
• It reduces misunderstandings- There are many factors for misunderstandings but one of the most common factors is poor communication. When you are listening to others there are fewer chances to mishear something.
• Listening improves business relationships- If you have a career that involves interaction with people, listening to them, builds better business relationships with team members and clients.
• Improves leadership skills- Being a good leader requires a better listener. Active listening helps you hear different perspectives and ideas of your team and prevent misunderstanding.

A communication breakdown happens every day in business but what’s important is it should be resolved at the earliest.

Here are some ways to deal with communication breakdown

• Accept your mistakes- Blame shifting makes things worse. If you were wrong and communicated poorly, own it and let everyone know as it does wonders in resolving communication breakdowns.
• Focus on Unity- Whatever you do make sure people are coming together and there is no gap between them as communication breakdowns divide and destroy. If everyone in the room gets involved, results will come out better.
• Win people, not arguments- People who are blamed for communication breakdown let me tell you beating them should not be your goal instead winning them is. If you are trying to win the argument to prove a person is wrong you just lose him.
• Keep patience- Communication breakdowns are very frustrating and winning over them is hard. Without patience, it will only get worse and create a huge mess.

In your career, there will definitely come a time when you have to deal with people who have less technical understanding and not the same understanding level as yours.

How you will address the issues to them, let's have a look

• Don’t assume anything- Don’t lighten your efforts by assuming that your audience has some tech knowledge.
• Use humor and humility to explain it- You have to make them comfortable and say to them in a kidding way that you are a computer nerd type of person and apologize if you get too technical.
• Don’t try to cover it all in one go- Take care of how you are moving forward. For you, it could be incremental progress but for that person who is unfamiliar with the issue, it may feel like an earthquake.
• Use visual content-. Research shows that picture effects can increase your memory of anything by 65% versus 10% when you are hearing it.
• Avoid technical idioms when possible- Maybe you are habitual of using acronyms like DBMS, GCP but try to avoid using them.

Start this answer by saying that it would unlikely happen, as you are a good listener and always listen carefully to your boss and team members. If I feel there is any confusion I will double-check with them and ensure we all are on the same page. But as we are humans, we can make mistakes. If it happens, I will accept making a mistake and will definitely learn from it.

You have to discuss how skilled and good you are in communication on a scale of 1-10. Try not to give yourself a 10 as nobody is perfect and we all are in a learning phase. A rating of 10 will let your interviewer know that you are overconfident and there is no space for any improvement or feedback. Alternately also avoid giving you too little and try to be in a range of 7.5-9 followed by an example to prove it.

E.g. I was engaged in a remote team of developers and wanted to report a bug. I have sent an email and described the bug thoroughly but developers were not able to reproduce that. Instead of wasting time I have recorded my screen, narrated the video, and shown them stepwise what I have observed and they have accepted that bug.

These types of questions are best answered by the STAR method i.e. Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Keep your answer short and simple and avoid overdramatizing the event and responses that include-

• Speaking against or negatively of others.
• Avoid taking names in your examples
• Telling the interviewer that you are perfect and can get along with everyone.

Some quick ways to handle these types of situations-

• Have some patience and try to go with a language they better understand.
• It’s time to show your listening skills. Yes Listen first and react second.
• When dealing with a bad communicator, it’s important how you are using your words and body language.
• Sometimes people are bad at communicating and listening too. In those situations be clear in your words. It won’t show you are rude, rather you give priority to your work.