Best interview questions for a Porter

Porter Interview Questions

Porters are customer service experts with excellent people skills. They will ensure that guests have the best possible experience at your business from day one. This means chauffeuring luggage, running errands, and helping with any questions or concerns guests may have.

These are the Porter skills a candidate needs:

• Proven experience working with customers or guests.
• Ability to work on feet for long periods of time.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Great social
• Experience with computers.

Interviewing a Porter

A Porter will be a direct form of contact between your guests and your business. Therefore, you need to be sure you’re making the right hire to give your guests the experience you intended. This means that deciphering their customer service, communication, and problem-solving skills during the interview process is essential.

To help you do just that, we’ve put together these example Porter interview questions which will test their soft and hard skills, as well as their cultural fit within your team. These questions should be used at the beginning of the interview process, to establish early in the hiring process whether the candidate should be moved forward.

How to open the job interview

No matter how skilled your potential Porter is, an initial interview will bring out the nerves in a candidate. While this is natural, it can mean that you don’t get to assess their skills and cultural fit properly.

To combat this, you should aim to ask one or two easy opening questions at the start of your interview. This will get the conversation flowing and ensure you get a real gauge on their personality and skill set.

Job Description available

See our Porter job description here

For the interview

A positive opener to start

How did you choose a career as a Porter?

What is the best memory of your career as a Porter?

Behavioral Questions

Can you give an example of a time you gave excellent service to a guest or customer?
Customer service is an essential part of a Porter role. Here, a candidate should be able to walk you through a time they gave excellent service, and they should mention their motivation and actions.
Describe a time you have had to work with a difficult customer. What did you do to stay motivated and overcome the problem?
Not every customer will be easy to serve! Knowing your candidate has experience working with difficult customers and has behaviours that they can fall back on in these situations will give you peace of mind.
Describe a time when you received negative feedback from a guest. How did you learn from this?
It is important that the candidate can stay motivated in these situations. They should be able to turn the feedback into actionable points and use this in future situations.
Describe a time when you have dealt with a guest who needed special attention. What did you do?
From time to time, special guests or guests with exceptional needs will arrive at the business. Knowing your candidate can cope with this is important.

Soft Skills

How would you help the Receptionist or other colleagues during a particularly busy time of their shift?
If one colleague falls behind during a shift, it can have a ripple effect on the rest of the business. Your candidate needs to be able to communicate with the rest of the team to help out and to utilise their initiative to anticipate the guest's needs.
If you noticed a colleague making a mistake with a guest’s luggage, what would your next steps be?
The most important thing a candidate can do in this situation is to step in as soon as possible to minimise disruption to the guest’s experience. They should ensure to remain professional in their communication, too.
What skills do you have that make you an ideal Porter?
Here, you give the potential Porter a chance to show off their confidence areas and skills they are most proud of. They may mention both hard and soft skills here, so be sure to note them down.
If the business were to receive a bad review, what would your reaction be?
A Porter should have great initiative. They should be able to analyse the review and turn it into actionable points that they can bring forward into their everyday work.
When dealing with a particularly argumentative guest, how do you defuse the situation?
This can be a difficult part of working face to face with the public. However, an ideal Porter will have good communication skills that help them to deal with this situation.

Hard Skills

Do you have any experience working with food?
In some cases, a Porter may help out with the Kitchen Staff. In these cases, it is good to know whether the candidate has worked in this type of situation before.
Which computer software or systems have you used in previous roles?
This will give you an idea of the types of systems your potential hire will need to be onboarded with.
Which tools or equipment did you use to help transport luggage in previous roles?
Again, this question will give you a better understanding of a candidate’s experience and whether you will need to train them in any area.
Have you received any formal customer service training?
Here, you’ll get a better idea of a candidate’s customer service experience and skill level.
What shift length are you used to working in previous roles?
As Porters will often be on their feet and lifting things, so it is good to know what experience a candidate has with shifts and how this matches up with your workplace.

Operational / Situational Questions

Imagine you make a mistake when dealing with a guest’s belongings. What would you do, and how would you learn from this?
The priority here should be the guest’s experience. Knowing they can communicate with the guest, apologise and quickly rectify the situation is essential. They should then make a few actionable points that they can learn from here.
Imagine you are successful and receive the role of Porter at our business. What would your first steps be?
Your potential hire should mention familiarising themselves with the workspace and current business practices, in order to integrate with the team as quickly as possible.
Imagine you are tasked with making a VIP guest’s stay as special as possible, what steps would you take to achieve this?
This question tests the candidate’s ability to go above and beyond for a guest. Here, you can compare their answer to your business processes and assess their cultural fit.
Imagine you have a disagreement with a colleague on how to handle a guest, how do you rectify this?
Again, you’re assessing a candidate’s communication skills and cultural fit for your team here.