Microbiologist Mock Interview

Master 30 Microbiologist interview questions covering lab techniques, contamination control, and research methodology.

Question 16 of 30

What is the difference between accuracy and precision?

How to Answer
Example Answer
Community Answers

Clara is a career coaching expert and has supported individuals landing positions in education, non-profit, corporate, and beyond.

The interviewer is looking for how clearly you delineate the difference between these two terms. You can reply by either providing an example that illustrates that you understand the difference and can relate it to real-world situations or by simply describing the difference. You could follow up with saying why both are relevant and important in a laboratory setting.

Clara Canon

Clara is a career coaching expert and has supported individuals landing positions in education, non-profit, corporate, and beyond.

"Precision is the agreement between a series of measurements obtained from multiple sampling of the same homogeneous sample under the prescribed conditions, while accuracy is the proximity of an individual measurement to the 'true' value as determine by the reference method/gold standard. Of course, both accuracy and precision are incredibly important in a lab setting."

Interview Coach

Jaymie

A real coach, not AI. I read every answer myself and write back with personalized feedback.

Typically responds within 24 hours.

0 - Character Count

Previous Question Next Question

30Microbiologist Interview Questions & Answers

1.What made you choose to become a Microbiologist?

2.What have you done to further your own professional development in the past 5 years.

3.Give me example of a large project or task you completed, the steps you took, and the overall outcome.

4.How do you feel about supervising others and their work?

5.Are you a detail-oriented person?

6.What drew you to our organization?

7.What is your greatest strength?

8.What is your greatest weakness? What are you doing to improve it?

9.What sort of working conditions do you thrive in?

10.How do you prioritize when you have multiple deadlines?

11.Do you have any questions for us?

12.Tell me about a challenging interaction with reporting results to physicians, family members, or researchers.

13.When making a 1L 1X PBS solution from the stock 10X concentration, how would you do it; which formula would you use?

14.What is the purpose of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and give an example of when you've ran one in the past?

15.How would you handle testing 100 samples?

16.What is the difference between accuracy and precision?

17.What is the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells? And, what is your experience with prokaryotic cells?

18.In the scenario where your quality control fails, what troubleshooting step would you take?

19.What is gram staining and why is it significant?

20.In the scenario where your laboratory finds contamination, what troubleshooting step would you take?

21.What is your experience with following procedure, preparing for, and involvement in a regulatory audit and/or inspections of any kind?

22. What steps do you take to limit contamination?

23.What is the difference between a quantitative assay and a qualitative assay?

24.How has NGS changed testing and what is your experience using the technique?

25.When your boss asks you to get 5 aliquots each of 5 different samples to delivery to another department, what is being asked and how would you perform the task?

26.A colleague asks you to ensure the glassware is sterilized for next week's experiments, what do you do?

27.Describe a time when you made a pipetting error and what you did to fix it?

28.When your boss asks you to design an assay to detect drug resistant bacteria, provide a list of 3 things you will do before testing and optimizing begin?