When looking to hire an optometrist, it’s important to have well-thought-out optometrist interview questions ready.
Interviews for dispensing optician jobs can seem daunting, but being prepared can help you shine. In this competitive field, you’ll need to demonstrate both technical knowledge and stellar interpersonal skills to land the role.
This article will explore the top 30 dispensing optician interview questions you’re likely to face. We’ll look at why employers ask these questions and provide sample responses to help you craft winning answers.
Whether you’re just starting out or have years of experience, use these tips to highlight your skills and wow potential employers.
Common Behavioral Interview Questions
Let’s start with some of the general behavioral interview questions you may encounter:
Tell Me About Yourself
This open-ended question is often used to kick off interviews Employers want to learn about your background, strengths, and motivations. Focus on optics-related experience and skills while keeping answers succinct
Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?
This reveals your career aspirations and long-term outlook. Emphasize how you hope to develop new technical skills and take on more responsibility in an optical setting.
What Are Your Career Goals?
Share your professional objectives, like earning a certification or managing an optical shop. Fit your goals to the employer’s needs and stress your desire to positively impact vision care.
Why Did You Apply for This Position?
Do your research beforehand to explain why you’re interested in this specific role Highlight aspects that match your abilities, like customer service skills.
How Would Your Coworkers Describe You?
Choose positive traits colleagues often point out like your attention to detail or collaborative spirit. Back up claims with specific examples.
Why Do You Want to Work for Our Company?
Show you’ve researched their practice. Mention things that appeal to you, like their use of innovative technologies or community involvement.
Technical Questions
Now let’s look at some of the more technical optician interview questions:
How Do You Stay Up-to-Date on New Frames and Lens Options?
Stress the importance of continual learning. Describe reading optometry journals, attending trade shows, and networking with sales reps to learn of new products.
What Steps Do You Take to Clean and Disinfect Eyewear?
Demonstrate you understand proper protocols by walking through techniques like using germicidal UV light and alcohol wipes. Emphasize safety.
How Do You Adjust Frames to Ensure a Proper Fit?
Highlight precision skills like using micrometers and pupil gauges. Share tactics for ensuring customer comfort, like heating plastic frames to mold them.
What Quality Control Steps Do You Take When Filling Prescriptions?
Prove you won’t make mistakes by detailing processes like triple-checking scripts and validating finished orders. Stress accuracy and accountability.
How Do You Educate Customers on Contact Lens Use and Care?
Show your patience and communication abilities. Describe demonstrated insertion and removal, emphasizing proper hygiene. Review appropriate lens solutions and frequency of replacement.
Can You Explain Prism, Cylinder, Add and Other Optical Terms?
Flaunt your technical knowledge by clearly explaining concepts like prism’s ability to correct double vision and add power’s role in reading glasses.
What Equipment Like Lensometers Do You Know How to Use?
List the specialized tools you have experience with like pupilometers and vertometers. Share how you ensure equipment is calibrated and maintained properly.
How Do You Partner with Optometrists to Deliver Excellent Vision Care?
Highlight communication and collaboration skills. Give examples of co-managing patients, like flagging potential eye health issues spotted during fittings.
Customer Service Questions
Customer service abilities are crucial for dispensing opticians. Expect interviewers to probe your skills in this area:
How Do You Handle a Customer Dissatisfied with Their Glasses?
Show empathy and troubleshooting skills by asking questions to identify the root cause. Describe adjusting frames or recommending a re-exam to resolve vision issues.
What Factors Do You Consider When Helping Select Frames?
Detail how you guide choices based on face shape, lifestyle needs, prescription requirements and personal style. Stress customization.
How Do You Manage Multiple Customer Requests At Once?
Share techniques like quickly triaging by priority and complexity. Outline how you multitask efficiently without sacrificing service quality.
How Do You Calm Angry or Frustrated Customers?
Emphasize emotional intelligence and de-escalation skills. Explain how you actively listen and express understanding before professionally resolving issues.
How Do You Set Appropriate Expectations Around Lead Times and Costs?
Highlight transparent communication, realistic time estimates and explaining price factors. Share tips for presenting expensive options diplomatically.
How Do You Build Loyalty and Relationships with Customers?
Discuss going the extra mile with follow-ups, remembering preferences and providing exclusive perks to VIPs. Share how you craft a welcoming, trust-based environment.
Scenario-Based Questions
Expect interviewers to present real-world optician scenarios and ask how you would respond. Some examples:
A Customer Can’t Adapt to Their New Progressive Lenses. What Do You Do?
Show patience and problem-solving by first checking for fit issues. Describe recommending a transitional multifocal design if needed. Review proper usage.
You Notice a Child’s Glasses Aren’t Correcting Their Vision Well. What Are the Next Steps?
Emphasize protecting patients by immediately booking an exam to determine if an updated prescription is needed. Stress the importance of timely intervention.
An elderly patient keeps forgetting your instructions for inserting contact lenses. How would you help them?
Highlight adapting approaches by demonstrating proper techniques again while speaking slowly and clearly. Suggest involving a family member and providing written instructions.
A patient needs glasses repaired the same day. Your lab is backed up. What now?
Display creativity by exploring options like calling partner labs to expedite the job or providing a loaner pair until theirs are fixed. Calm and reassure the patient.
Questions to Ask Employers
The interview isn’t just about you. Come armed with thoughtful questions that show your engagement while helping you evaluate the role:
- How do you support continuing optician education and development?
- What opportunities are there for advancement long-term?
- How would you describe the practice culture and workplace dynamics?
- How is the customer experience prioritized here?
- What qualities do your most successful opticians possess?
- What are the most common vision issues or complaints you see?
- How is workload shared and divided among the team?
Show Your Skills in Your Dispensing Optician Interview
Preparing responses for commonly asked questions can help you put your best foot forward. Use the sample answers provided to highlight your technical abilities, customer service skills and passion for optics. With preparation and practice, you’ll ace your next dispensing optician interview. Good luck!
What is an Optician?
A professional who helps people choose and put on glasses and contacts based on a prescription from an eye doctor or an optometrist is called an optician.
Usually, opticians have a high school diploma or equivalent and are trained on the job.
Some opticians get their start in the field by getting an associate’s degree or a certificate from a technical school or community college.
What does an Optician do?
An optician’s job is to help people choose the right glasses or contacts for them based on their specific problems.
They also dispense and fit glasses and contacts and provide instructions on using and caring for them.
They also provide adjustments and repairs to customers’ existing glasses.
Some Opticians also sell sunglasses and other vision-related accessories.
Most opticians work in stores, like eyeglass shops, department stores with optical departments, and vision care centers.
Some may also work in hospitals or private practices.
Some good Optician Interview Questions to ask include:
- What experience do you have in the optician field?
- What steps would you take to help a customer pick out the right glasses?
- What do you think is the most important thing about being an eye doctor?
- How do you think your eye care business is different from others?
- What are your future goals for the optician field?
- How did you get interested in optician work?
- What do you think are the hardest things for opticians right now?
- What do you believe will be the best chances for opticians in the future?
- If someone wants to become an optician, what advice would you give them?
- How about you? What do you think eye doctors should know about their clients that is very important?
Optician Interview Questions
FAQ
What to ask at an optical interview?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of an optician?
What is a ophthalmic dispensing optician?
What to wear to an optician interview?
What questions are asked in an optical dispenser interview?
When you go to an interview for an optical dispenser job, you can expect to be asked a mix of general and specific questions about your skills, experience, and qualifications. To help you prepare, we’ve compiled a list of sample optical dispenser interview questions and answers.
What questions are asked during an optician interview?
During an optician interview, you often have to answer questions about your work history and education. These questions help hiring managers determine whether you can do the duties of the job. Here are some questions a hiring manager may ask about your experience and background as an optician: Tell me about your experience as an optician.
What qualities does a dispensing optician need?
Some of the personal qualities a dispensing optician requires will include (this list is not exhaustive): A passion for eyewear, eye health, lenses and helping people. Caring, compassionate, approachable, empathetic and understanding. Confident, assertive, motivated, determined, honest and trustworthy. Knowledge of science and maths.
Why do optical dispensers ask a question?
The interviewer may ask this question to assess your comfort level with working in a lab environment. This is an important skill for optical dispensers because they often work with different types of materials, such as plastics and metals, that require specialized tools and equipment.
