Seeking General GIS Questions for Job interviews?
To be able to answer questions asked in a GIS interview not related to any particular software you should have the ability to explain the following topics:
- What is GIS?
- What is remote sensing?
- A bit about Image processing.
- What is georeferencing?
- The role of GPS in GIS.
- What are projections?
- What is cartography? (Questions on map elements like scales, legends etc:)
- Data structures that can hold spatial data. (Raster, Vector, ...)
- Examples of what can be achieved by GIS? (Geocoding or Network or Spatial Analysis giving real life examples)
- Open Standards related to GIS. (OGC or otherwise)
If you have a development background, questions pertaining to which development language you know are bound to rise up. It will benefit the organization hiring to have someone who can develop custom GIS solutions. These questions could be either GIS related or not depending on your previous experience. As far as development is concerned, people with no GIS background are also hired to develop GIS solutions.
Finally, if you're the interviewer, then confirm which GIS software the interviewee is already accustomed to working with. It would help to hire someone who already knows how to tinker with the solutions that are implemented in your organization.
If you're the interviewee, well, know that for a large part you'll be judged by what is in your CV/resume. The list of the above questions might give you an approximate direction on what you need to start looking at.
I am not convinced that an interview process is all about questions... Knowledge is important but it's not everything. In my own experience, the very fact that that a person has been chosen for an interview means that the employer is more-less satisfied with the particular candidate's qualifications. As an interviewer, I would definitely not waste any time asking a candidate whether they know what heads-up digitizing is. Let's also make clear that I am talking of direct recruiting here (an actual employer directly communicating with potential candidates), not trough an agency/ headhunters, etc.
A huge part of an interview is to discover whether the chosen candidate will "fit in". How passionate they are about GIS, what is their personality like, work ethic, etc. Holes in knowledge are easily remedied with training but holes in personality are not.
I think the best questions asked at an interview are those that examine the candidate's own experience; a project that the candidate has worked on, etc. This allows the interviewer to find out just about everything they need to know: depth of knowledge, problem solving, team work, troubleshooting and problem solving, communication and presentation skills, etc.
If I may then recommend; be prepared to talk about your own GIS project/experience. This should be something challenging and something that your are passionate about. For folks with no work experience it may be easily be a school project or thesis. Bring visuals. A mini-portfolio with you to support your experience; examples of maps, slides of web applications, anything interesting that will give you the opportunity to talk about your skills.
Even if this type of question is not a part of the interview you will almost always be asked if you have any questions or anything to add.
It depends what you are hiring for. We tend to avoid glossary like questions, though we include one or two just to quickly throw out people.
We more often than not have been disappointed with fabulous resumes and smooth talkers that fail miserably on competency tests we give them. It's gotten to the point that we don't even bother looking at resumes and just focus on the candidates interest because great candidates don't always represent themselves well via resumes but outshine in tests.
Rather than simply asking questions, we like to give tests that demonstrate competency and comprehension. So if for example you are hiring for a GIS database architect, ask them a problem and have them itemize the list of tables etc they would create to solve it.
Have them write a spatial sql statement that solves a posed question. If an application GIS architect -- ask them what operating system, choice of tools etc would they use to solve a proposed need? Challenge them with why they chose that set over others in similar family.