If you are interviewing for a Canada Border Services Officer or US Customs and Border Patrol Officer, you will need to read this post and take our Customs Officer Interview Course. Below are some job interview questions for a Canada Border Services Officer or US Customs and Border Patrol Officer job. The methods we used to develop these questions are the same ones we used as corporate HR in developing job interview questions for hiring managers. We have developed these questions by analyzing the core competencies or skills, job ad requirements and so forth.

Canada Border Services Officer & US Customs and Border Patrol Officer Job Interview Questions

In order to carry out your duties as a Customs and Border Officer you will be required to bear arms. Are you willing to bear arms?

In order to carry out your duties as a Customs and Border Officer at times you will you will be required to exert lethal force. Would you be willing to shoot with the intent to kill?

Being a Customs Officer you will require you to have the highest ethics and integrity. Suppose you are own duty and a relative or friend of yours crosses the border at your gate. You ask what they are bringing across and the how much they have purchased. The amount they purchased is just a bit over the amount allowed. How would you handle this?

Describe a situation in which you demonstrated a strong ethical stance at work, despite pressure to do otherwise?

• What were the risks involved in taking the strong stance that you did?
• How did you overcome the pressure to change or weaken your stance?
• How did the position you took affect the relationships that you have with the others involved?

How has your experience in life prepared you to carry out the responsibilities of an customs and border officer?

The job may require you to enforce laws and rules that you may not believe in personally. Tell me about a time when you had to enforce a rule or policy that you did not believe in?

Attention to detail is critical to the job. You will be dealing with a high volume of people crossing border and customs. You will also have to be able to quickly determine if the individual before you could be breaking customs and border laws. Tell me about a time when noticed or identified a problem before anyone else did?

To be effective in this job, you will need to be good at resolving conflict. Sometimes you will need to resolve conflict when an individual or a group of individuals attempting to cross the border are being abusive. Give me an example of a situation where you had to resolve conflict with an angry or abusive customer there or somewhere else.

List 5 traits of being a good customs and border officer? Which one would you need the most improvement in?

More About These Questions

The interview questions in this post assess the essential soft skills for his particular job through its core functions. We focus on the soft skills because we have found that most candidates handle the questions designed to assess their technical proficiency very well only to stumble with the questions designed to assess their soft skills. For example, when we ask a programmer to explain what a certain set of code means or how best to handle a coding issue, most often their answer is a good one. Now when we ask the same candidate to “describe a time when you did not get along well with a co-worker and how you handled it” to assess their interpersonal skills, 9 times out of 10 they stumble. We see the same thing over and over again whether we are hiring for an accountant, teacher, and so on. Most candidates can handle questions designed to assess their technical competencies much much better than questions designed to assess their soft skills

Why does soft skills matter? Because 9 times out of 10 applicants are bypassed due to their soft skills. We hear this all the time when we debrief with the hiring manager to get their feedback on the applicant. Sometimes, the hiring managers will directly state that the applicant lacked the soft skills but more often it will be phrased as “no connection with the applicant”, or “didn’t get a good feel about the applicant” or “don’t think the applicant would fit in well” and so on.

In addition to focusing on the soft skills we have incorporated behavioral based interview questions. We focus on behavioral based interview questions because they are very prevalent in the HR industry. Behavioral questions focus on assessing past behavior by asking you to provide an example or describe a situation that has happened in the past and what you did. So because of the reasons stated and others beyond the scope of this post, you will likely be asked these questions in your next job interview.

How to Answer Border Services Job Interview Questions

Your response really depends on exactly the type of interview question asked. While interviewing skills as a hiring manager or job applicant can be quite an in depth topic and beyond the scope of this post, we have provided a quick lesson on how you can improve your interview skills. We have chosen to briefly cover the behavioral question because this is where we see most people struggle.

To ensure that you provide good answers consistently we advise that you follow a structured approach when responding to behavioral type questions. Two effective techniques to use are “STAR” (situation, task, action, result) and “PAR” (problem, action, result). These techniques are very similar to one another, so for illustrative purposes, we will discuss the STAR method.

To use the STAR technique, simply describe each element in your interview answer. So with the star technique, begin by describing the situation. Here you want to quickly give context to the interviewer (where, when, etc). Next clearly describe your task, that is what were you tasked to do in this situation. Now it is time to describe the steps or action you took to complete your task. Lastly, describe the results that you achieved. Sounds simple right? Well it is simple, but the secret is to practice responding following this structure. By following structure, you will ensure that you provide complete answers and do not omit vital pieces of information. For more information see our articles and courses on interviewing skills.

The Questions Are In Your Resume

Remember that another good source of job interview questions is your resume. Hiring managers will ask you questions based on your resume. For some people it’s hard to recall what you did last week, let alone what you did at work a few years ago. So it pays to review your resume before you go to your job interview.

For more see our online job interview and resume writing courses. So until our next post, we wish you much luck and success in your career search.

If you liked this post, then check out:

1. Customs and Border Services Officer Job Interview Coach Part 1
2. Sample Job Interview Questions And How To Answer
3. Customs and Border Services Officer Job Interview Coach Part 2
4. Customs and Border Services Officer Sample Resume – CBP and BSO Resume Example
5. Soft Skills Sells In Interviews