The employer is screening for your awareness of email security threats and your ability to protect the executive from phishing, which is a common risk for remote assistants handling a high-trust inbox.
Explain your step-by-step process: verify sender identity, inspect links without clicking, quarantine the message, report it, and notify the executive only if it is truly urgent. Emphasize caution over speed.
Start by naming the concrete red flags you actually check for, not just the generic ones. Say plainly that you look at the sender address character by character, because spoofed names often hide a misspelled domain or a slight variation like using a zero instead of the letter O. Then explain that you hover over any links without clicking to see the real destination URL, and you check for a sense of urgency, unexpected attachments, or a request for credentials, gift cards, or wire transfers. If the email claims to be from a known vendor or colleague but the tone or formatting feels off, that is a red flag too. When you suspect something, do not delete it and do not click anything. Instead, quarantine the email by moving it to a separate folder or marking it as phishing, then report it through your company's security or IT channel, or through the email provider's report function. Mention that you would also verify with the supposed sender through a separate communication method, like a phone call or a new email thread, before taking any action. Finally, say you would alert your executive only if the threat is time sensitive or if you need their approval to report it, but otherwise you handle it quietly to avoid unnecessary alarm. This shows you prioritize process over panic, which is exactly what a busy executive needs.
Some candidates say 'I will just delete it po' or 'I will click the link to check if it is safe' which is dangerous and too casual. Instead say you would verify the sender and URL, quarantine the email, and report it through the proper channel.
Situation
While managing the inbox of a startup founder based in Singapore, I noticed an email that appeared to be from his bank asking him to verify his credentials by clicking a link.
Task
I needed to quickly assess whether the email was legitimate and decide whether to flag it, delete it, or forward it to the executive.
Action
I checked the sender's actual email address and noticed it used a domain like 'security-alert@dbs-online.com' instead of the official bank domain. I hovered over the link without clicking and saw it pointed to a suspicious shortened URL. I immediately moved the email to a quarantine folder and reported it as phishing in the email client. I then drafted a note to the executive summarizing what I found and advised him not to click the link if he saw a similar email on his phone.
Result
The executive thanked me and confirmed later that his bank never sends such links. No information was compromised, and I added that sender's domain to the block list.
Always verify the sender's actual address and link destination before taking any action on a suspicious email.
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