20 admin assistant behavioral interview questions (+ answers to look for)

Admin assistants play a pivotal role in managing schedules, facilitating tasks, and ensuring seamless communications within a company. If they’re not in tune with their managers or teams, then mistakes can be made and important tasks overlooked, causing confusion and chaos in the workplace. 

Thus, it’s critical to test a candidate’s behavioral attributes to check if they’re a good fit before hiring them as an admin assistant. Behavioral interviews can give you valuable insights into a candidate’s thought processes, prior experiences, and observable traits. However, you need to ask the right questions. 

In this guide, we share 20 interview questions to help you check if your candidates can make successful admin assistants in your company. We also offer tips on how to successfully add behavioral tests to your hiring campaigns making them airtight and reliable.

What are behavioral interview questions?

Behavioral interview questions capture a candidate’s personality traits, attitudes, and working styles. These question types are geared toward asking candidates about: 

• Prior experiences and how they’ve exhibited specific traits and behaviors in their previous jobs, academic, or personal lives. These questions typically start with phrases such as, “Describe a situation where,” and “Tell me about a time when.” 

• Working styles and how they approach their tasks and projects. The questions usually begin with, “How do you?” And, “What steps would you take to?”

• Future scenarios and how they expect to respond to different and mostly hypothetical situations. These questions are usually phrased as, “How would you handle a scenario where?” And, “What would you do if?” 

The idea is that a candidate’s responses to these questions tell you about their core characteristics. These, in turn, can help predict their behaviors in a new company. 

Why include behavioral questions in your admin assistant interviews

Behavioral interviews bring a host of robust benefits to your hiring practices and the company overall. A few of these key advantages are listed below. 

Help to evaluate if candidates are the right fit for your company 

If an admin assistant doesn’t mesh well with your employees or working practices, they’ll struggle to provide the right support – regardless of their skills and qualifications. 

Behavioral interview questions can help you assess a candidate’s personality traits, working styles, and preferences. This way, you can ensure they’ll fit in with the teams and senior management in your company. 

Give reliable insights into candidates’ behaviors

Candidate resumes usually list out qualifications, skills, and traits but there’s no way to tell if these check out in the real world. For instance, a candidate may claim to work well under pressure. But, in reality, if they can’t keep up with fast-paced environments, they won’t really make good assistants. 

That’s why you can’t solely rely on screening resumes. With behavioral interviews, you can probe candidates on their experiences which gives you a reliable way to verify their qualifications and behavioral attributes. 

Predict candidates’ future performance 

Behavioral interviews typically ask candidates about how they’ve dealt with specific situations in their past experiences. 

Additionally, you can test candidates on their responses to hypothetical scenarios tailored to your company’s values. For example, “What would you do if you found your manager engaging in unethical practices?” 

Both types of behavioral interview questions are powerful and can help predict how candidates will behave in the future. 

Promote fair and objective hiring practices 

Behavioral interviews add another layer to your hiring process and help you differentiate between candidates who possess similar skill sets and technical abilities. 

This way, you can make more objective hiring decisions based on a candidate’s attributes and avoid some of the unconscious biases that recruitment and selection processes are prone to. 

20 admin assistant behavioral interview questions and answers to look for

To maximize the insights you gain from behavioral interviews, you need to ask candidates the right questions. 

Below, we share 20 questions associated with the 10 key competencies great admin assistants possess. We also provide additional guidance on what to look for in candidates’ responses. 

Organization

Admin assistants undertake a broad range of administrative duties, such as coordinating meetings, managing schedules, answering phones, handling paperwork, and so on. 

Look for candidates who:

• Are methodical and systematic in their approach to work 

• Break down complex projects into simple, manageable tasks 

Avoid progressing candidates who are unable to provide concrete examples of how they’ve effectively organized documents, tasks, or information in their previous roles. This may indicate a lack of experience or weak organizational capabilities. 

These questions assess how candidates organize themselves and their work.

1. Share an example of a time you implemented a new organizational system or process. How did you do it and what improvements did you notice?

2. Tell me about the most complex project you’ve worked on. What approach did you take when working on it and how did you organize yourself? 

Thoroughness and attention to detail

Admin assistants often deal with important data, documents, and communications, so even minor oversights can be costly. 

Prioritize candidates who: 

• Actively proofread their work or use software to catch typos and mistakes 

• Go to great depths to understand their tasks and projects before working on them

Avoid candidates who allude to being distracted, are error-prone, or can’t clearly explain how they double-check their work.

This set of questions tests candidates’ attention to detail and conscientiousness at work.

1. What steps do you take to ensure that your documents and communications are accurate and free from mistakes? 

2. How do you make sure you’ve fully understood a new task or project that you’ve been assigned? 

Time management and efficiency 

Admin assistants often face heavy workloads and competing priorities. They need to maximize their time to meet deadlines, work without mistakes, and prevent burnout.

Consider progressing candidates who:

• Are good at prioritizing their work and strive to maximize productivity 

• Work to improve and simplify inefficient processes so their teams can focus on their core roles

Conversely, candidates who describe an unstructured or haphazard approach to working through their tasks are likely to struggle with time management, make more mistakes, and miss deadlines. 

These questions investigate whether candidates can efficiently manage their time and the team’s time:

1. How do you prioritize your tasks and manage your time effectively to ensure that you’re meeting or staying ahead of deadlines? 

2. Describe a time when you’ve streamlined tasks or removed unnecessary bottlenecks to make things more efficient for your team. 

Proactivity

Admin assistants need to anticipate the potential requirements of their teams. By preparing in advance, they save time and provide seamless support.

Look for candidates who:

• Take initiative and are great at identifying when people need support 

• Make efforts to prevent potential issues before they escalate 

Be cautious of candidates who haven’t demonstrated examples of when they’ve taken initiative at work or those who constantly appear to wait for explicit instructions to get things done. 

Proactivity-related questions show you if a candidate actively takes charge of improving processes and solving problems for the team:

1. Give an example of a situation where you spotted a potential problem or issue that others hadn’t. What measures did you take to address it and what was the outcome? 

2. What steps do you take to anticipate the future needs of the teams you support? 

Communication 

Admin assistants are often tasked with delivering high-stakes messages and communicating with important stakeholders, such as customers and company leaders. Therefore, it’s critical that they’re able to relay information with clarity and precision. 

Prioritize candidates who: 

• Are good listeners and communicate with clarity and accuracy 

• Can adapt their communication style to suit different audiences  

Avoid progressing those who exhibit poor listening skills, come across as incoherent, or have difficulty expressing their ideas during the interview, or in the responses they share. 

These questions help to check if your candidates can communicate effectively with key stakeholders:

1. Describe a situation where miscommunication – either written or verbal – led to a problem in the team. What steps did you take to resolve it? 

2. Imagine that you’ve been asked to relay a complex piece of information to an important client. What steps would you take to ensure that you’re communicating the information accurately and effectively? 

Discretion and trustworthiness

Admin assistants often deal with confidential information such as financial data, personnel records, business strategy, and more. Sensitive data leakage could have costly repercussions for the company’s reputation, its employees, customers, and investors.   

Consider progressing candidates who:

• Demonstrate they can be trusted with classified information 

• Use an ethical approach to handling and sharing restricted information 

Candidates who struggle to outline how they can protect private information are less suitable for an admin assistant role. 

Use the following questions to test a candidate’s trustworthiness:

1. What measures do you take to ensure you’re protecting any sensitive and confidential information? 

2. If you come across confidential information that has a significant impact on you or your team, how would you handle it? 

Presentation and personability

Admin assistants are often the face of the organization – interacting with customers, visitors, and vendors. The impression they make can influence how external parties view the company’s members and values.  

Look for candidates who:

• Present as polished, well-spoken, and charming 

• Demonstrate they can adapt their behaviors to the needs of the room 

Candidates who exhibit a lack of concern for their appearance in the interview or come across as unprofessional can be a red flag for some organizations. 

The next few questions examine how candidates present themselves – especially when meeting or speaking to important individuals:

1. How would you describe your demeanor when dealing with internal and external stakeholders? 

2. Describe a situation where you used your charm or friendliness to accomplish something you needed from another individual or group of individuals. 

Adaptability and flexibility

The nature of an admin assistant’s work involves diverse tasks, multiple stakeholders, and priorities that change constantly, so they need to be nimble and flexible in their approach to work. 

Prioritize candidates who: 

• Exhibit the ability to wear different hats and switch quickly between them 

• Can flexibly change their styles and priorities to accommodate different requirements

Candidates who demonstrate discomfort with change and uncertainty or have inflexible work hours are likely to struggle as admin assistants. 

These questions look at a candidate’s ability to be flexible and adaptable to different people and projects:

1. Tell me about a time when you had to quickly adapt to changing priorities or handle unexpected requests.

2. Describe a situation where you had to adapt your working style to accommodate the needs of a new manager or employee.

Multitasking

Admin assistants need to manage multiple calendars simultaneously, organize paperwork, handle emails, and so much more. The ability to multitask effectively is key to success in this role.  

Consider progressing those who:

• Demonstrate they have produced high-quality work and met deadlines for multiple projects at the same time

• Have a clear, methodical approach to multitasking

Avoid progressing candidates whose responses show that they are unstructured or tend to “wing it” with their approach to managing competing, high-priority tasks.  

This set of questions dives into a candidate’s ability to work well on many tasks at once:

1. If you’ve been tasked with multiple projects – all of which are high priority with similar deadlines, how would you tackle them? 

2. How do you ensure you produce high-quality work and don’t make mistakes when juggling many tasks at once? 

Tech-savviness

With so many manual and administrative tasks to accomplish, it’s important for admin assistants to find and use software that improves communication, task management, planning, calendar scheduling, and more, to save time and increase productivity for themselves and their teams.

Look for candidates who:

• Take a proactive approach to using technology to streamline work 

• Demonstrate the ability to learn new tools and software quickly  

Don’t consider progressing those who still discuss using traditional and inefficient working practices or demonstrate discomfort with new technologies in their responses.

This final set of questions aims to capture how tech-savvy your admin assistant candidates are:

1. What measures do you take to ensure that you’re staying up to date with the latest technologies? 

2. Give me an example of a time when you’ve used technology to simplify or improve a manual task or process. 

Adding behavioral testing to your admin assistant hiring campaign

With TestGorilla, you can choose from an extensive test library to create tailored behavioral assessment campaigns for different roles. 

For the admin assistant role, we recommend:

• Rolling out personality tests such as the Big 5 (OCEAN), Enneagram, or DISC. The Big 5 (OCEAN) test determines a candidate’s openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and other key attributes that are important to the role.   

• Curating a behavioral assessment with custom questions that are relevant to your company.

• Using the Culture-Add test to evaluate whether a candidate will mesh well with your company’s people, culture, and working practices.

• Conducting a video interview to better assess communication styles, demeanor, and other attributes that are important to the role. 

Additionally, ensure that behavioral testing isn’t the only tool you use for hiring. The best hiring efforts employ a multi-measure testing approach which includes testing job-specific skills, cognitive ability, and more. 

For example, have candidates take one or more of the following tests to get a complete picture of their skills and abilities.

• Administrative Assistant Skills test

• Time Management test

• Computer Literacy test

• Attention to Detail test

• Typing Speed test 

Conclusion 

Hiring admin assistants who don’t gel well with their executives or teams can lead to miscommunication, costly errors, and many more problems. 

That’s why you should use behavioral testing to learn about candidates’ personality traits and behaviors before you hire them. 

Thorough admin assistant behavioral interviews give you insights into a candidate’s efficiency, communication, trustworthiness, and more. They can also help you understand how candidates will think and act in different scenarios. 

Behavioral testing, used alongside other skills and cognitive ability tests, gives you a reliable way to determine if your candidates have what it takes to be a good admin assistant in your company.  

Sign up for TestGorilla’s Free plan to start conducting behavioral tests with your candidates. Request a free 30-minute live demo for a more detailed understanding of how TestGorilla works, or watch a quick product tour to explore more right now.