Experience

Interview Question: What are your three biggest strengths? – Answer Tips

November 7, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

There are probably an infinite number of questions that the interviewer could ask you on the day. Some questions are incredibly common appearing in almost every interview you will have, while other questions you might hear once and never again regardless of how many jobs you apply for.

Fundamentally though all interview questions are really trying to find out one of 3 things:

1 – Can you do the job? (Do you have the skills/experience needed?)
2 – Will you do the job? (Do you have the drive/motivation to get the job done?)
3 – Will you fit in? (Does your personality match the workplace culture? Are you likeable?)

That’s it. Those are the 3 things that the interviewer is trying to ascertain. Every question that is asked of you will fundamentally be trying to resolve one (or more) of these 3 things.

This is a relatively straight forward question. And it is obvious that the interviewer is trying to find out No. 1 above – “Can you do the job?”

There’s no real hidden agenda at play. The interviewer simply wants to know where you believe your strengths lie.

The interviewer will be coming into the interview knowing exactly what their team/organisation need. What experience or skill set is missing from their current employee base. They are looking to see if your strengths will marry up well with what they are looking for.

The interviewer will have your CV so they will know exactly what you’ve done, but they want to know in your own words what areas of the job you excel in.

The best approach to answering this question

This is an interview so there is no point being modest. The best answers will briefly discuss how you believe that you have a quite varied skill set and a possess a great many strengths that are applicable to the role before drilling down into 3 that you believe to be your best.

This is not a story based question (like a ‘Tell me about a time‘ question) where the interviewer is expecting you to walk them through one of your experiences (where the B-STAR technique is the correct approach)

No for this question the ideal approach is to list all 3 strengths and then in turn go into further detail about why you feel that you possess each strength and how you are able to use that strength in your current role (the best answers will also relate this strength to the role that is being discussed).

How NOT to answer this question

Do not avoid the question. – This question is about your strengths. Ensure that is the question you answer. I have seen people take this question all sorts of ways; ranging from candidates just rehashing their experience without mentioning what it was they were good at, to someone who actually talked about what areas she thought she was weakest in. Keep it straight forward. The interviewer asked for strengths, give them some strengths.

Do not be overly modest. – It’s an interview, you are allowed, – nay – required, to sell yourself. Blow your own horn and share with the interviewer what your skills are. Being modest here will just mean that you do not get the job.

Do not give a one-sentence answer. – Just listing off 3 strengths will not get you far with this question. You need to explain to the interviewer why you feel this is one of your strengths, linking back to your previous experience and trying to tie that in to how you would use this strength in your future role.

BIGGEST STRENGTHS – Example answer

“As you can see from my CV I have a great deal of experience in a wide range of roles. This experience has afforded me the opportunity to considerably grow my skill set over the years to the point that now I believe I possess a great many strengths that can be applied to excelling in this role.

You asked for my 3 biggest. I think my 3 biggest strengths are my problem solving abilities, my communication skills and my industry knowledge.

The first of these strengths I wish to discuss is my industry knowledge. I have been working in this area for my full career, working all across the spectrum in various roles. I believe this puts me firmly in the Expert category when it comes to our sector, I will bring this knowledge into every project I work.

My 2nd biggest strength is my communication skills. After 3 years of sales experience I have no problem building rapport and in creating instant connections with stakeholders of any level. I have created long lasting relationships with customers, suppliers and all levels of management. If I were to join X company not only would I seek to make a great first impression to all my new stakeholders I would also seek to tap into my existing network for the betterment of the organisation.

The last strength I wish to discuss may sound a bit cliche but I do think it is my strongest area. I am able to quickly and efficiently solve problems as they land on my desk. In my last role this came in handy during COVID when we were working remotely with a reduced workforce, everything needed to be completed quickly but without sacrificing quality. I can use these skills to aid in projects that have tight turnaround times or that require ‘thinking on your feet’.“

Interview Question: What energises you? – Answer Tips

August 29, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

Energises is the word that the Civil Service Interview guide likes to use for this question. In other sectors though it is most often worded as “What motivates you?” and it is a strength based question that I really hated when I was a fresh-faced youngster applying for my first jobs.

It’s a nuisance question because it gives you no indication as to what the interviewer actually wants. What energises me?…I suppose that pint can of Monster I just downed is giving off some energy I suppose.

So what does the interviewer want?

They are looking to see what makes you tick, how do you gather up the energy to come into work and do a good job day after day, what part of the role do you find actually interests you.

And finally they want to see if what energises (or motivates) you is in line with their organisation and how they work.

The best approach to answering this question

So how do you answer this question when you don’t even know what they want?

Firstly you should ensure that you are well prepared for the interview. Research the company itself on Glassdoor and LinkedIn, you are looking to see if anyone has left a review on the interview process and any feedback they were given. If you are lucky you will get some good information about what it is they are looking for.

Make sure you have read the job description over and over looking for any clues as to what they are looking for – the first paragraph is usually were they keep all their buzzwords; “Results-driven”, “Inquisitive nature”, “People person”.

Use these buzzwords when tailoring your answer.

So if they say they are looking for someone who is ‘passionate about improvement’ then in your answer talk about how self-improvement and process improvement is a passion of yours and that is what energises you through the day – the continued pursuit of development.

How NOT to answer this question

Don’t talk about personal activities – It’s easy to say that your family motivates you (or something similar), and while it is almost certainly true it’s not really an appropriate answer here. The interviewer is going to assume that you already love your family, what they want to know is what motivates you in the workplace.

(Side note – I did hear a fantastic answer once were a candidate said their kids were their biggest motivator, the role was with Forestry England and the candidate talked about how much the Forestry service played a role in her childhood and how ensuring that her kids could have the same experiences as her is what would motivate her in helping to preserve and enhance the woodlands across the UK – So the above isn’t a hard rule, but if you are going to talk about personal motivators make sure you can tie them into the job somehow)

Don’t talk about money – Interviews are a weird construct that we humans have devised. Everyone knows that the primary reason anyone is applying for a job is to make money, but for some reason it is uncouth to say as much. But this is an interview and you want this job so you have to play the game. Don’t talk abut how your primary motivator is to get paid.

Don’t talk about what motivated you to apply for the role – It’s easy to confuse what energises/motivates you in work with what motivated you to apply for this job, particularly as that is also a very popular interview question, but this question is not about that.

What energises you? – Example answers

Motivators Example Answer 1

“I am motivated by the people I work with. I enjoy when we succeed together and I am spurred on during difficult times knowing that I have a solid team around me. For example in my most recent role I was on a great team that really had each other’s backs. When one of our colleagues dropped the ball on a piece of work we all rallied together and worked overtime so that there was no gap in output from the team. This type of team support is what energised me to perform in that role.”

Motivators Example Answer 2

“Success is what energises me. This is why I prefer project type roles. The ability to say that a project has been successfully deployed is what drives me during the more mundane run of the mill day-to-day activities. Recently I was able to close the book on a 30-month IT infrastructure deployment. This was a project that had been completely re-scoped 3 times just during the time I was attached to the project. But knowing that the project would eventually be deployed is what drove me throughout.”

Motivators Example Answer 3

“I am motivated by helping people and by solving problems, this is why Level 2 support roles are where I flourish the most. I like being able to speak with customers and help solve their tricky problems. For example, a few weeks back a bug was discovered that was preventing a customer from making online payments through our new app. After liaising with the customer and with the relevant developers I managed to isolate that the issue was due to the customer’s VPN location. Once this was resolved the customer was able to access the app as normal. I was particularly driven by this encounter because the issue itself was particularly complex in that it had never been seen before but also the issue was very important to the customer as they were attempting to make payments abroad for hospital treatments so it was very rewarding to be able to help them with that.”

Interview Question: Tell me about a time when you have made a mistake in a project – Answer Tips

August 18, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank
Project Manager Question & Answer Sheet

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

No this is not a trick question. But it is not as straight forward as it seems on the surface.

The interviewer is not as interested in the mistake that you made but rather how you handled the situation once the mistake was realised.

Did you attempt to cover up your mistake?
Did you draw attention to your mistake?
Did you, successfully, fix your mistake?
Did you change how you approached the task in the future to prevent re-occurrence of the mistake?

All of these things will be running through the interviewers mind when you are answering this question.

The interviewer is less interested in the actual mistake* than they are in how you handled yourself in the face of the mistake being realised and what, if any, steps you took to fix the mistake and learn from the experience to prevent similar issues going forward.

*That said the interviewer is going to raise an eyebrow if you talk about a particularly devastating mistake so try to keep it minor (no showstoppers!)

The best approach to answering this question

This is a “Tell me about a time” question. As with all questions phrased in this manner your answer is going to require sharing an example from your experience. I always recommend that when answering questions like this that you follow the B-STAR technique.

Let’s see how this method would work on this question:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts/feelings on the matter? – Explain to the interviewer how you feel about making mistakes (presumably not great). Talk about how when you realise a mistake has been made that you seek to highlight and correct the mistake at the earliest possible opportunity. Once the damage from the mistake has been reversed (or minimised) then you look to see the root cause of the failing and take steps to prevent re-occurrence.

S – Situation – What was going on? And what was the mistake? – Set the scene for the interviewer. It is important to remember at this point that this is still an interview, and is under a time restraint. So don’t spend too much of your time describing the issue, if possible make your example very easy to understand – simple project, simple mistake.

T – Task – What was your responsibility at the time? – Talk about what your role in the situation was. What tasks were you responsible for in the original project, in making the mistake and in the clean-up. Good answers will touch upon how you took a pro-active role in helping to fix your mistake.

A – Activity (or Actions) – What steps did you take? – Upon realising your mistake what did you do? Run through each activity you completed while conveying to the interviewer why you believed these steps to be necessary. This part of the question should form the bulk of your answer.

R – Results – How did it all turn out? – What was the end result? Again, this is an interview so let’s try to keep it simple and say that the end result was positive. The mistake was spotted, you owned up to it, you were pro-active in getting the issue remedied and finally you enacted some changes to how you work to prevent the issue from happening again.

How NOT to answer this question

Do not describe a work place catastrophe – I appreciate that the question is asking you to share a mistake but don’t fall into the trap of sharing your biggest mistakes. Keep your examples to mistakes that were somewhat important to your role/function but that did not have life or career threatening impacts.

Do not use a failure as an example – When choosing your example try to talk about one where you were able to wind back all (or at least some) of the damage that your mistake caused. Also ensure that you were able to learn something from the experience for the next time you are in a similar situation. Do not describe a time when you made a mistake, it was never fixed, and you do not know how you would react if a similar situation were to happen again.

Do not avoid the question. Don’t tell the interviewer that you never make mistakes. I have seen candidates use that answer hundreds of times and not once has it ever endeared them to the interview panel. Everyone makes mistakes. If you claim that you never make mistakes the interviewer is not going to believe you, they will either assume you are lying or that you are very inexperienced.

Tell me about a time when you have made a mistake in a project – Example answer

“I hate making mistakes – I suppose everybody does – that is why I always advocate for proper planning. I am a ‘measure twice cut once’ type of girl. When a project is planned correctly the risk of mistakes by any one person are greatly reduced. However on the occasions that a mistake of mine does ‘slip the net’ I always immediately highlight it to the project/workstream and take steps to remediate the fallout.

For example, back when I was Delivery Manager at [REDACTED] my project team were in charge of delivering an important piece of work to the business every Tuesday morning. This piece of work took my team 1 day to produce. One such week – after a bank holiday – the report was going to be delayed until Wednesday (as my team needed the Tuesday for production since Monday was a non-working day).

The mistake that I had made was that I had not communicated this delay to the business area expecting the report and as such there were a team of people without any work to do.

Upon learning of my error I immediately contacted the team lead of the business area and explained the situation, taking full blame for the error and apologising for the inconvenience caused. I listened to the lead talk about how their team used the report and between the two of us we devised a temporary solution. My team would deliver the report in 4 stages, so as opposed to receiving one full report the business would now receive 4. This would allow them to start work on the first stage while my team continued to produce the remaining stages.

Had I not took responsibility and sought out how to rectify the situation then the entire team would have lost a full day’s production, in the end they only lost 1.5 hours, of which the Team Lead advised me they used to complete mandatory learnings anyway.

Once the situation was resolved I went back plugged the gaps in my RACI matrix and communication strategy so that this issue would not present itself going forward. I also took the time to take a couple refresher courses on LinkedIn with regard to stakeholder management. I can safely say failure to communicate will not be an issue for me again!”

Interview Question: Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process – Answer Tips

August 12, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of:

Civil Service Question Bank

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

In order for a business to survive it needs to continually grow, it is not enough for a firm to just tread the waters as eventually another company will come along and take their place.

This is true in the public space also, the general public is not content to receive the same level of service forever when they see other cities, counties, states, countries etc. receiving better and better service.

So how does a business continue to grow? One of the main ways is via continuous improvement.

Constantly looking for ways to reduce costs, increase profits, improve efficiencies by looking at and introducing change to current business processes.

That is what the interviewer is looking for when asking this question. Are you someone who will look at the process and notice areas for improvement? Or are you content to just work the process as is?

As this is a behavioural question the interviewer will want to know how you have gone about changing processes in the past, what steps did you take, did the changes stick, was it a success, etc.?

The best approach to answering this question

This is a “Tell me about a time” question. Clearly the interviewer is expecting an example of a time you improved upon a process, that much is obvious. But there are good examples and there are bad examples.

The best way to approach this is to first discuss your thoughts on process improvement. Talk about how you feel strongly that all colleagues should take the time to review their processes to identify areas of improvement.

Once that is out of the way you want to get straight into your example using the S.T.A.R method.

The best example to give is one in which you identified an enhancement to a process that would save time or money for your organisation.

Once you identified the enhancement you took steps to organise your idea and present it in a straightforward manner to your management team.

The best answers talk about how after presenting to management you either led the project to change the process yourself or were an important SME during the project.

Finally once the process was updated to include your changes what were the results? Did you get the benefits you thought you would? It is best during an interview to use an example were the process change was a success.

Not every process improvement is a success but this question is not the right time to talk about that. Pick an example where you were key to the change and the change was a success.

How NOT to answer this question

Don’t avoid the question. If you have truly never improved a process in a professional setting then think of an example from your personal life or from back in school. There is no worse answer you can give than:

“I don’t think I’ve ever done that, every job I’ve had I have just followed the process as given to me”

If you really are hitting a brick wall and literally have no examples to give then resort to giving a hypothetical answer about how you would change a process if you could.

Another thing you should avoid talking about is making changes to the process unilaterally:

“Prior to logging case files onto the system the process was to send it to a colleague for a ‘buddy check’. After working some 50 cases without any feedback from the ‘buddy’ I opted not to follow this part of the process. This meant that I could log cases onto the system a day or so earlier than normal.”

In this example the interviewee has removed a step from the process in order to save time. It also appears as though the interviewee failed to clear this with anyone in his department before doing so. Given the nature of the task it is probable that this ‘buddy check’ was there to catch quality issues and approval to remove this step would not have been given had the request been made.

A better thing to do would have been for the interviewee to query the buddy check process itself, it seems unusual for there to be zero feedback at all across 50 cases.

Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process – Example Answer

Check out 5 example answers in this quick read guide

“I am a big fan of continuous improvement. I am always looking for ways to improve my skills and to make the people and processes around me better and more efficient. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it is my passion but something I very much enjoy doing is automating repetitive functions.

One such occasion was in a previous role where I was working in the accounts department of a flooring company. This firm employed numerous contractors across the country who would be submitting expense reports and invoices regularly.

My job was to receive these emails and transpose the data into our accounting software in order for payment to be made.

As I was interested in automation I knew that a lot of repetitive type data entry tasks could be automated. But I wasn’t sure how. So before I approached my managers with my idea I did some research into various solutions.

Once I found how it could be done I pitched the idea to my managers who were totally on board. We hired an IT contractor who automated the entire process within a week.

The end result was instead of spending 20 hours a week on expense reports and invoices I spent just the 1 hour doing quality checks of the tool, leaving me an additional 19 hours a week to spend on other value adding tasks for the firm”

Question Banks

79 Civil Service Interview Questions (And Example Answers)
94 Project Manager Interview Questions (And Example Answers)
32 Test Manager Interview Questions (And Sample Answers)
34 Change Manager Interview Questions (And Sample Answers)
Business Analyst Job Interview Question & Example Answers
PMO Analyst Interview Questions (And Sample Answers)
33 Team Leader Interview Questions (And Sample Answers)
Quality Assurance Analyst Interview Questions (And Sample Answers)

Interview Question: What are you good at? – Answer Tips

August 5, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

This isn’t a trick. This question isn’t one of those where the interviewer is asking one thing but is actually looking for something else.

This is as straight a question as you can be asked.

The interviewer wants to know what you are good at. What skills do you have. What areas of the role will you excel in.

Your CV will only give half the picture. The interviewer wants to hear straight from you what skills you bring to the table. From your answer the interviewer will be assessing whether your skills are what they need in the organisation.

The best approach to answering this question

While this is a straightforward question, you should still take care with how you answer it.

I find that most candidates fire straight into what they think their best attributes are with no regard for the role or the company.

This is a mistake. When you answer this question (and all questions in an interview) you should always be mindful of what the interviewer wants to hear.

Take time to re-read the job description before you go for your interview. This will tell you exactly what the company is looking for from the candidates. This is what you will say you are good at; when the question is asked.

Sure it is a bit deceitful. But hey, that’s how the game is played.

Be sure to talk about a few things. You do not want the interviewer to think you are a one trick pony.

The best answers will highlight a few things that you are good at while emphasising one skill that you really excel in: all the while tying back what you are saying to your experience. That is what separates good and great answers. Everyone can say that they are great at leadership, but not everyone can back up this self-reported greatness with experience.

As mentioned it is best to get your answers directly from the job description, here are some things to look out for:

Skills / Strengths for Job Interviews

Strengths you can use in a job interview (buzzwords):

Expert in an industry software
Adaptability
Leadership
Quick study
Detail oriented
Focused
Able to juggle many things at once
Planning
Communicating and Influencing
Problem solving
Experience

It is important for this question and other similar questions (like the dreaded “What are your 3 biggest strengths”) that you don’t just read off the skill and move on. You should mention the skill and go into a little more detail as to why you are so good at it. Take a look at the examples at the end of this post to see how.

How NOT to answer this question

Don’t be too humble. Sure it is difficult for some people to ‘big themselves up’. But this is not the time for false modesty. If you are ever going to show off your skills to someone this is the time and the place

Don’t say you are good at everything. If you say you are great at everything then it starts to become less believable. Limit your answer to 2 to 4 strengths.

Don’t say you are hard working. Such a cliché answer. You want to separate yourself from the rest of the candidates. Your future employer will expect all of the candidates to be hardworking you need to show something that differentiates you and shows the interviewer why you are right fit for the role.

Some other popular responses that you will want to avoid:

Honest
Punctual
Trustworthy
Reliable

Obviously these are all good traits to possess however as mentioned all of these things are expected of any employee and will not make you stand out – which is what you want in an interview.

What are you good at?

Example answer 1

“As you can see from my CV I am an experienced project manager and I do believe I am very good at my role. I am a very good planner, I am quick to adapt to changing business environments but I believe my best attribute is my communication skills.

Being a project manager is all about being able to communicate effectively and to all different types of stakeholders – something I learned recently when we released a new software upgrade and I was communicating with front-line customer service colleagues all the way up to the CEO of the whole group! – It is this experience and others that have moulded me in to the skilled communicator I am today“

Example answer 2

“I’m not usually one to toot my own horn but when in an interview I suppose it is a must. I have a few attributes that I am particularly skilled in. I am hardworking – but I guess everyone says that – I am also an extremely quick study as you can see from my qualifications. But my greatest strength that I bring to the table is my experience in the sector. I have been working in this industry for over 10 years and have worked in a multitude of departments across all areas of the supply chain. There is not much about this trade that I do not know.

So you ask what am I good at, I am good at knowing where everything fits together, why certain processes are the way they are, who the best suppliers are in the area, etc. The knowledge that you can only gain from doing. I will be the person on the team that everyone comes to when they need more information about their work.“

“Tell me about a time” Interview Questions – What does your interviewer want? (Example Answers Included)

July 4, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Tell Me About A Time Question Examples

Tell me about a time when you have identified an opportunity for improvement within your processes?
Tell me about a time your decision was overruled
Tell Me About A Time When You Went Above And Beyond For A Customer
Tell me about a time when you have challenged the usual way of doing things
Tell Me About A Time You Helped A Co-Worker Learn A New Skill
Tell Me About A Project That Failed
Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process
Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team
Tell me about a time when you have had to make a decision using only limited information?
Tell Me About A Time Someone Challenged Your Decision

What the interviewer is looking for by asking ‘Tell me about a time’ questions

Interviews are like exams; you show up, someone asks you a question and you give an answer.

Where they differ though is when you are in an exam you usually have the right answer, or you have the wrong answer.

When it comes to an interview the lines aren’t as clear.

You can have bad answers, OK answers, good answers, great answers and perfect answers.

“Tell me about a time” questions are your chance to differentiate yourself from the other candidates, there are no right or wrong answers, only an opportunity for you to showcase your skills and experience.

When an interviewer asks a “Tell me about a time” question they are looking for someone who has experience in the subject matter and want to hear how you have handled the particular situation previously.

The questions they ask are sometimes indicative of what the corporate values and work culture is like.

Firms that value exceeding customer expectations will ask questions like “Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond for a customer“.
Organisations that are hiring in order to increase efficiencies will ask questions like “Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process“.
Etc.

The exact question you are asked will give you insight into what the interviewer is after. But regardless of the question when you are asked to “Tell me about a time” you know that the interviewer wants to see your experience in the subject matter and how you have tackled those situations and how you would tackle them in the future.

The best approach to answering these style of questions

When answering these type of questions it is important that you give full and detailed answers. But at the same time you need to ensure you remain on point and are not ‘waffling on’ and giving out too many superfluous details that the interviewer does not care about.

That is why we recommend using the B-STAR method. The B-STAR method is specifically designed for you to be able to hit all the key areas that the interviewer is looking for while still keeping your answers within a reasonable time frame.

Let’s take a look at how B-STAR works:

B – Belief – What are your beliefs (or thoughts/feelings) about the topic at hand. Do you have a process or methodology you usually follow when challenged with this topic? Are you passionate about a particular way of working or doing things?

This part of the answer is your chance to talk about your high level non-specific view on the subject.

Q: Tell me about a time when a delay impacted your ability to deliver
A: “I believe it’s very important to always be on time, especially in a professional setting. That is why I always take time to accurately set deadlines that I know are achievable. I appreciate there will always be times when this is not possible so I also feel that as soon as I know I am going to be late I need to inform my colleagues to manage their expectations. There was an occasion…[answer continues with STAR]”

Notice how the answer doesn’t have any details. You are giving the interviewer a look inside how your mind ticks and what frameworks/philosophies you live your life (and your working life) by. The interviewer will now know that the rest of your answer was no fluke occurrence, what you did and what you achieved is directly what you set out to do and falls in-line with your beliefs on the matter.

S – Situation – Set the scene for your tale. What was going on, where were you, who were you with, why were you there? When was this?

Basically the 5 Ws.

A: “A few months ago we (my colleague and I) were supposed to give a presentation in the clients office to provide a status update on their project but my colleague’s train was cancelled and they were going to be over 15 minutes late to the meeting start”

T – Task – What was your responsibility, what had you been assigned to do? Or rather what did you now have to do given the situation?

A: “It was now my responsibility to manage the situation with the client. A client that was very important to the firm and who we had only just started doing business with.

A – Action (or Activity) – What did you actually do? Walk through the steps that you took once you realised your situation all the way through to the end result.

A: “I quickly made a call to my manager to advise of the situation. The guidance from above was that the presentation had to go on as planned. I then called my colleague to get caught up to speed on his slides within the presentation. Luckily I had worked with my colleague to produce the presentation so it was a quick information download for me. I explained the situation to the client and reassured them they were in good hands with me while I delivered the presentation.

R – Result – How did everything play out? Did everything go as planned? You should also talk about any lessons that were learned from this scenario that you put to use in the future.

A: “The meeting ended up going quite well. I did struggle in some of my colleague’s areas but we were able to rectify that later when my colleague arrived. The client was impressed that I was able to cover both roles as seamlessly as I did and the relationship flourished from there. In the future I always ensured that I knew the whole presentation so that this issue would not re-occur.

Why is the “B” Important?

How NOT to answer these questions

Do not avoid the question. The question is the question. That is what the interviewer wants to know, do not answer some other question that the interviewer hasn’t asked.

Do not describe a failure (unless specifically asked). Failure is important in life, it gives us opportunities to learn and grow. However this is not so easy to explain in an interview setting. Take the easier route and talk about your successes – and feel free to include some lessons learned in the ‘R – Results’ portion of your answer.

Do not downplay the situation. You are trying to sell yourself here. This is not the time or the place to be modest. Tell the interviewer exactly how important the situation was and how crucial you were in it.

Do not overhype the situation. Don’t go too far in selling yourself. Make sure you accurately represent the situation as it happened, once you start embellishing or over-exaggerating encounters the interviewer will pick up on this and you might lose credibility.

Do not say you have no experience with the subject matter. This is difficult to avoid if you truly have no experience with the matter being discussed. So you will need to fake it til you make it. Talk about experience outside of a work setting if you must.

Do not reject the premise of the question. Try to not to belittle the question. The question is being asked because the interviewer believes the subject matter is important to the organisation. You should feel the same (if you still want the job of course)

Do not have a passive role in the situation. The interviewer wants to see what you have done, what steps you took, what actions you drove to completion. Make sure you were an active participant in any example you provide.

Do not give a one-sentence answer. You need to expand on your answer in order to show that you have the necessary experience.

Do not overly describe the scenario and miss the action. Your answers need to focus on what you did and how you helped in the situation. Obviously the scenario needs to be described so everyone knows what was going on but the bulk of your answer needs to hit at what you did and how you will apply that knowledge and experience in the new organisation.

Tell me about a time when you have identified an opportunity for improvement within your processes? – Example Answer

“I am always looking for ways to improve my processes both in work and out of it. I feel that if we are not looking to improve, to optimise then we will stall and eventually get surpassed. Better to be ahead of the pack than overtaken by the pack.

Recently in my current role I was tasked with reviewing and documenting the process for one of our business areas. These teams worked in customer complaints and were primarily responsible for gathering information about our customer to input into the complaint file.

This was a purely manual process and involved the team going into various systems and pulling the relevant data to input into a spreadsheet.

In order to perform my task I shadowed a few colleagues over the course of a week to better learn how they perform their function. From here I noticed a number of things that could be improved.

Firstly the team had to manually check a folder to see if any new complaints had arrived. I suggested that an automated solution could ping an email to the Team Leader to advise when a complaint had arrived and could – if it was wanted by the business – automatically allocate to a team member.

Secondly I noticed that the systems the team would gather data from all had various data feeds coming in and out. My suggestions were to interact with this feed for the complaint so that the data required for the complaint files were automatically shared with the team meaning that they did not need to go into each system. I had a further suggestion that would compile the data into the complaint file but after further analysis I deemed this to not be feasible with the current resources available.

Once I was complete I delivered the documented process maps to the business area and filed my suggestions with the relevant programme manager, who took my suggestions and formed a project that delivered on all of my suggestions and took an action to look at further resource to implement my compilation idea. The successful delivery of the project reduced the time it took to complete a complaint file by 50%.

Tell me about a time your decision was overruled – Example Answer

“When I make a decision I always make sure that I have evaluated each and every option and take a rational approach to choose the optimal one based on the data available. I would say it is not often that my decisions are questions or overruled but when they are I am always appreciative of the feedback provided and, while I try to advocate my position further, if the decision has been made I accept that and see what lessons I can learn for the future.

On one such occasion I had been asked to produce a list of employees who would be suitable for a new task force the organisation was deploying. This would be a great career move for all of the potential members so there was a lot of interest from within the department.

I set about immediately by collating all of the information about the candidates and matching this against a list of required and desirable qualities for task force members. Any colleague that did not have the required qualities was ruled out and then the rest of the candidates were ranked according to how many desirable qualities they showed.

When I presented this list to my director he overruled a number of the choices I had made. I listened to his reasoning for each of the changes and largely agreed (for example 2 of the candidates had disciplinary actions on their file that I did not have access to see).

There was one change that I did not agree with. The director was requesting that a colleague be brought onto the task force when their position in my ranking meant that he would be jumping ahead of 3 other better qualified candidates. The reasoning behind the decision was clear in that the candidate in question was a relative of a senior director elsewhere in the organisation.

I advocated strongly against this change informing my director that doing so would be a case of nepotism that is highly discouraged in our organisation and would look poorly upon myself, the director and might even tarnish the reputation of the newly formed taskforce. Once it was laid out in front of him like that the director acquiesced and we went ahead with the original list of colleagues with the 2 discipline cases swapped out.

Tell Me About A Time When You Went Above And Beyond For A Customer – Example Answer

“I was always taught, as a child, that if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well, and I fully believe that still today, as an adult. I also believe that if you exceed a customer’s expectations by going above and beyond then that customer is many more times likely to revisit your business again down the line.

This is a philosophy I have taken with me to all my previous roles and will take with me to any future roles.

One time I remember going above and beyond was when I was working the Front Desk at my previous employer. Our hotel had a restaurant attached that was popular with guests and non-guests alike.

We had a customer at the restaurant try to book a same night stay at our hotel. Unfortunately for this customer though this was a busy weekend for the hotel and we were fully booked.

Upon learning that the customer was from way out of town and was quite stuck I took it upon myself to call around the other hotels in the area and find him a last minute room. It took about 20 minutes but I managed to find him a place not too far away and ordered him a taxi.

I have seen this customer numerous times since and he has told me that every time he stays in the city for work he now uses our hotel because of how much I helped him out that night.

Because I went above and beyond our hotel managed to turn someone from a restaurant customer to a frequent stayer.”

Tell me about a time when you have challenged the usual way of doing things – Example Answer

“I am always looking for ways to improve, be it my own development or trying to enhance the work in the office I believe that we all need to continually evolve else we will be overtaken by others.

On one such occasion I was assigned to oversee a process that was somewhat new to me. I took a short while to ensure I fully understood the end to end process and when I did I started to identify areas that could be improved.

My first ‘enhancement’ was also the most difficult to push across the line. In this organisation we had a number of subcontractors. These subbies would complete invoices on a word document and then email these across to the office staff who would then manually type the invoices into excel where another user would then combine them into other reports.

Coming from an automation background I knew that this process could be better streamlined so I set about seeing our options. I presented these options to my management team along with the estimated costs and benefits of each.

Management approved of my preferred option and tasked me with overseeing the deployment. Getting the subbies on board was easy as our process was similar to other firms that the subbies worked with so it made their jobs easier. The biggest hurdle to overcome was getting the office staff on board with a new process, but after a few training sessions and once they saw how much time would be saved out of their day they eventually came around. I did have to spend the first few days fighting fires though and handholding some colleagues through the process!

Overall the new process was a success and is still being used today saving a lot of time manually re-typing data.”

Tell Me About A Time You Helped A Co-Worker Learn A New Skill – Example Answer

“I love working in a team. I truly believe that when a team is functioning correctly that it is greater than the sum of its parts. More work just seems to get done than would be if we were working independently. That’s why whenever I see a team member struggling I always reach out and try to help for the good of the team. I also adore the feeling when someone learns something as a result of my help. In a different walk of life I might have been a teacher!

There was one occasion when our company was adopting a more Agile approach to our projects. Moving away from waterfall and into a sprint based delivery approach.

I noticed rather early on that one of my colleagues, Jayne, was not grasping the fundamental idea behind the change and was still trying to operate in a waterfall approach.

I approached my manager to ask if we could support some additional training for the team on Agile so that we could all understand the philosophies. He agreed and we all began taking LinkedIn courses in the afternoons.

I reached out to Jayne during these sessions so that we could share notes and discuss what we had learned. I even offered that we should work together on a project so that we could bounce the ideas we had learned off each other.

That was all it took really. After we delivered a couple sprints in our project Jayne was a full Agile convert. She has actually moved out of the team now and has taken a SCRUM master position in a different department.”

Tell Me About A Project That Failed – Example Answer

“Obviously I don’t like to see my projects fail. I always try to plan for enough scenarios and build in enough contingencies to my projects that I am ready for anything. But some times things change and what was going ok yesterday might not be today, so I also believe it’s best not to get too attached to projects and realise when it is the correct move – for the business – to wind the project down.

There was one occasion in early 2020 where a project was facing massive delays. We were attempting to offshore one of our processes and the next step in the project was to send a few trainers overseas to initiate the training sessions. Unfortunately, days before we were due to fly out all flights were cancelled indefinitely (COVID-19)

It was now my job to try to salvage what we could. Our fallback plan was to conduct training sessions via Teams. This was going well until COVID-19 got in our way again. The overseas offices were closed by the government (soon after our own offices would close).

Our team all had the ability to work from home however the offshore colleagues did not.

We started to perform analysis on what it would take our end to get all of the required colleagues trained and working from home. It readily became apparent that the initial costs of deploying such a solution would be higher than the expected benefits over the coming years.

As a result I proposed to senior management that we terminate the project as it no longer made commercial sense. My proposal was accepted and the project was halted and the colleagues were assigned to other projects.

All was not lost however as we were able to repurpose the training materials to be used for our onshore colleagues which saw a reduction in the time spent in attaining competency.“

Tell Me About A Time You Improved A Process – Example Answer

My job was to receive these emails and transpose the data into our accounting software in order for payment to be made.

Once I found how it could be done I pitched the idea to my managers who were totally on board. We hired an IT contractor who automated the entire process within a week.

Tell me about a time you worked well as part of a team – Example Answer

“I love working in a team, I find the collaboration and task specialisation that group working offers allows for higher quality and more efficient outputs – than what would happen working solo.

In a previous role I actually initiated a shared team approach to our process. At the time the department I was working in was responsible for handling customer complaints for a large retail bank.

The process that we followed had 3 main phases; reviewing the complaint, calculating moneys owed in redress and production/mailing of the payment. Each member of the team would be assigned one case and would work the case through each phase to the end. We were expected to work 2 cases a day which meant 50 cases a day for the department.

I had a knack for the calculation aspect of the work and was able to breeze through them quicker than anyone else in the team. I noticed that other colleagues would struggle with the calculations not only with how long it took them but with the overall quality.

I suggested to my manager that we break the process down and allocate people based on their strengths. I took over calculations for the department while other colleagues were put on review and payments.

Using this team approach to the task we quickly started to hit 80 cases a day and even hit 100 cases a few times, a feat that I attribute to the team work we showed”

Tell me about a time when you have had to make a decision using only limited information? – Example Answer

“When I worked as a store manager for X I was there on Day 1 of a new store opening and it was my job to make the staff schedule.

Now if you’ve ever been responsible for creating the shift rota you know that the number of colleagues you need is based on forecasts. Forecasts that are largely driven from past data.

But this was a new store so I needed to decide how many staff we should have in without knowing how many staff we were going to need!

I had to think about things tactically. While it would not be ideal to have too many staff in it would be worse if we had too few; so any judgements I were to make would have to err on the side of over staffing.

Through my experience I knew how many staff members were needed to manage a store when empty and when at peak. Now I just needed to make an informed estimate of how many customers to expect.

I reached out to similar sized stores in the organisation and started to speak to the store owners within the area to get an idea of what to face.

Eventually using the information I had gathered I completed the schedule. Day of opening rolled around and luckily we had enough staff to motor through, toward the end of the shift we probably had too many colleagues on the shop floor but that just meant we were able to provide even better customer service. Gotta make a great first impression after all!

After things had settled down I reported to my senior management team that in the future it would be wise to provide the store manager with the analysis that was used when deciding to open the store in this location as it would have had a lot of the necessary information for me to make my decision”

Tell Me About A Time Someone Challenged Your Decision– Example answer

“Whenever I make a decision in work (or anywhere for that matter!) I ensure that I have looked at all the possible options and weighed the pros / cons accordingly to make sure my decision is the most effective one for the organisation as a whole.

That is why I enjoy when others question or challenge my decisions, as it allows me to hear differing opinions and improves my decision making abilities for the next time.

One such occasion occurred recently. I was put in charge of choosing a supplier for a part we needed on a new product range. We had taken proffers from 4 firms and it was my job to decide who to go with.

Using all of the information I could gather I made my choice, but before I rubberstamped my decision I invited some of the key stakeholders to a meeting to talk things over.

It was at this meeting that my preferred choice was challenged. The colleague raised good points in favour of one of the other suppliers, namely that we have used this supplier before so were already familiar with how they operated and would not need to create new relationships.

I agreed with my colleague and politely told them that I had considered that information when making my decision. I explained that the supplier I had chosen was cheaper than the supplier we have a relationship with. I also showed how this new supplier had recently hired a number of key personnel from our usual supplier meaning that we would be liaising with people we already had existing relationships with. Granted we would still need to create new accounts for the new supplier but for the cost savings I believed it was well worth it.

Once I mentioned this the colleague was immediately relieved, her main cause of concern was with dealing with new suppliers as our products were highly specialised and it often took a while for suppliers to get used to our requirements.

After the meeting I signed the contracts for the new supplier and we have received a number of shipments from them without incident.

Interview Question: Suppose the project has gone off the rails. What steps would you take to get it back on track? – Answer Tips

July 2, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank
Project Manager Question & Answer Sheet

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

Projects go off course all the time. Often times it is no-one’s fault, it is just a matter of life – and other times it is someone’s fault and somebody screwed up.

Either way if you are working as a Project Manager and the project goes off the rails it is your job to get it back on course, and it is you who is going to take the brunt of the blame if you can’t. Such is the life of a Project Manager, all of the responsibility of project success or failure fall on your head.

As this is the PM’s responsibility the interviewer wants to see how you would handle a situation like this. When asking this question the interviewer is looking to see if you are capable of keeping a cool head in a crisis, can you calmly identify the blockers, remove them and get the project back on its feet?

The best approach to answering this question

The best approach to this question will be a blend of theory and experience. There are certain steps that you should always take when a project is off course; such as assessing the situation, identifying the root cause, introducing remedies and monitoring the situation (all while communicating the project status to the stakeholders).

What will turn a good answer into a great answer though is being able to incorporate an example into your response. Obviously a real life example from your experience would be best but if you struggle to come up with one walk through a hypothetical answer with the interviewer.

To do this treat the question as though the interviewer has asked you to “Tell me about a time”. The best way to answer these competency based questions is via the B-STAR method.

Let’s check out how you can incorporate this technique for this question:

B – Belief – Share your thoughts / feelings on the subject. Quite simply just walk the interviewer through the theory of what you would do (identify the issues, re-evaluate project viability, resolve issues, etc.)

S – Situation – Segue from the ‘theory of projects’ direct into a personal example. Set the scene quickly. What was the project and what was the issue?

T – Task – What was your role in the project and how were you involved in it ‘going off the rails’. Obviously if you are applying for a PM role you will want to give an example where you were leading the project, but you also don’t want the issue to be something that you should have been aware of (COVID is a good external factor that everyone can relate to). A good tip would be to talk about how you were brought into the project because the project was going off the rails.

A – Activity – What did you do and why? This should be the bulk of your answer. Detail the steps you took and explain the reasoning behind why you took them.

R – Results – How did it all turn out? You can go one of two ways with this. Either the project was a success and everyone went home happy all thanks to you. Or you can talk about how the project could no longer be justified given the new state of play. The latter option is a bit trickier to explain in an interview setting but if you pull it off it shows the interviewer you are experienced and able to make the rational choices.

How NOT to answer this question

Don’t throw anyone under the bus. The project has gone off the rails, sure, and most of the time you could probably pinpoint the blame on one or two individuals. But at the end of the day, as the Project Manager the responsibility falls to you. If the project is off the rails because someone didn’t do their job properly the next question from the interviewer is going to be why you did not highlight that issue as a risk and have a mitigation or remediation plan in place.

Don’t avoid the question. Make sure you have some kind of response to the question. I have seen people avoid the question by talking about how it is impossible to say what you would do as you do not know the situation. Those type of responses will not endear you to an interviewer.

Suppose the project has gone off the rails. What steps would you take to get it back on track? – Example answer

“The first step I would take is to confirm if the project is still viable in its current state. I would do this by re-confirming the business justification and seeing if the same assumptions still hold true now. Assuming the project is still viable I would investigate the issues with the team and prioritise remediation or mitigation of each item, re-scoping or re-defining the project plan as need be. Once the new plan was ready I would re-issue to the project stakeholders for review and approval. Later on I would lead an investigation as to why these issues were not catalogued in the RAID log already, but that investigation would be held once the project was back on track.

I actually have some recent experience with a wayward project. COVID-19 had caused a number of our internal projects to stall out. I was brought onto a project when the previous PM had left the business. The aim of the project was to offshore one of our business processes. The project had stalled after our offshore office had been closed due to a lockdown.

The first thing I did was to re-confirm the business justification. In doing so I found that the project was no longer viable. The main aim of the project was to offshore a particular process (and therefore save on the labour costs), however the process itself was to be discontinued in around 18 months time anyway in favour of a new automated process. Given this, and the delays realised by COVID, the assumed cost savings were no longer accurate and the revised cost savings were negligible. I presented my findings to the Change Committee and requested I be allowed to take the necessary steps to close the project.“

Interview Question: Tell me about a time you have had to manage a difficult stakeholder – Answer Tips

July 2, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank
Project Manager Question & Answer Sheet

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

This is an extremely popular question so you need to make sure you have an answer prepared and ready.

This question tests you across a range of things. Firstly in the basics; do you know what a stakeholder is? Do you know their importance and can you analyse their needs and manage them adequately?

Further than that the question is asking for your experience in managing difficult stakeholders. Not every project is going to go smoothly and not everyone you meet will be open and supportive to your aims.

If you are in a professional working environment for any amount of time you will encounter difficult stakeholders. It is important that you are able to manage these stakeholders so that you can meet your goals and further the aspirations of your organisation.

How you will manage these difficult stakeholders is what the interviewer is interested in when they ask this question. Most stakeholders are not ‘difficult’ just for the sake of it:

Some will be incredibly busy people who cannot devote the time you want
Some will have been given different targets which your project will impact so they will not be excited about helping you
…and of course some people are just awful people!

Your interviewer wants to see how you approach all of these types of people. And of course the best way to find out how someone will approach a scenario in the future is to look at how they have reacted to similar scenarios in the past and understand if they learned anything from the experience.

And that my friends is the crux of why we get asked this question.

The best approach to answering this question

As this is a “Tell me about a time” interview question your answer is going to need to include an example. The best answers will be detailed while also being concise. In order to achieve this the B-STAR technique should be used.

Let’s see how that would work in this question.

B – Belief – What are your thoughts / feelings / processes regarding the subject matter? – Here you should talk about how whenever you are facing difficulties with a stakeholder that you always seek to understand the issue first before engaging with the stakeholder, then you approach with empathy and attempt to resolve the issue to everyone’s benefit.

S – Situation – Set the scene of your example – This is an interview so you wont have all the time in the world to describe what was happening. Explain the situation briefly, leaving more time for the steps that you took. A good scenario to describe would be one where the stakeholder was being difficult due to outside pressures that you then helped to alleviate.

T – Task – What was your role in the situation? – Talk about what you had been tasked to do and how this stakeholder being difficult was impacting that. Ideally you will be in a project management or equivalent role where stakeholder management is one of your key responsibilities.

A – Activity – What did you do? – Lay out all the steps you took to manage this difficult stakeholder. Good answers will talk about how you investigated the issue to understand the concerns of all parties and then approached the stakeholder with empathy toward their point of view. In the end though you need to talk about the action you took to remediate the issue.

R – Result – How did everything end up? – This is an interview so it is best to talk about times in which you were successful in your endeavour. Good answers will talk about how the stakeholder’s concerns were removed and they were no longer difficult or a hinderance to your goals. Talk in this section about any lessons you may have learned for the next time you face a similar scenario.

How NOT to answer this question

Do not dismiss the premise of the question. It is quite easy to fall into the trap of saying that you have never worked with a difficult stakeholder before. Some candidates will say this thinking it shows how well they get along with everyone. But this will not endear you to the interviewer. There are difficult stakeholders in every workplace up and down the country. It is not a reflection on you that someone else is difficult, saying that you have never had to deal with someone like that is showing your inexperience.

Do not ‘steamroll’ the stakeholder. I’ve seen this time and time again in work settings and in interview settings. An ambitious PM looking to force their project through will smash through any barrier that comes their way. Mostly what happens is a stakeholder raises an objection and the PM will remove the stakeholder from the project or go above their head to report the stakeholder for creating obstacles. This is not the right way to approach these issues. A PM should try to understand the issue in the first instance and resolve with the stakeholder. Ignoring the issue and pushing ahead regardless is not a good answer.

Tell me about a time you have had to manage a difficult stakeholder – Example answer

“Difficult stakeholders are unavoidable when you have been in the industry for any amount of time. It is just one of those things that you need to be aware of, not everyone is going to be on the same page or have the same goals as you and you will need to handle these people appropriately in order to deliver on your goals.

Whenever I find someone being difficult or not giving me the level of support I require in my projects I tend to do 2 things. Firstly I make sure that I fully understand the issue and therefore my colleague’s concerns and secondly I approach my colleague to discuss potential remedies to get things back on track.

For example, recently I was working on a project that would automate a key data gathering task within the process. This task was performed by 2 teams within the organisation and the lead SME of the teams was assigned to my project.

After some time I found that the SME was not participating in project meetings and any actions they would pick up would go incomplete or be delivered very late.

I spoke to the rest of my team individually as well as some contacts I had in the wider department. I learned that there was a rumour going through the two teams that once the project was delivered that the organisation was going to fire the 2 teams as they would no longer be needed with the new automation process going live.

This was not true however. Our actual plan once we delivered the project was to train these colleagues on a different process where more resources were required. I approached my senior manager to discuss a change to our communication strategy so that a notice could be sent to all impacted parties.

Once the communication was confirmed I approached the SME to explain the situation and remind them that the project still required their 100% focus. Thereafter the SME was much more involved in meetings and all actions were delivered on time. The project ending up a success and the teams were successfully trained on the new project with no colleagues being let go.“

Interview Question: When you are given a new project what do you do first? – Answer Tips

July 2, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank
Project Manager Question & Answer Sheet

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

This is a very popular question for junior and intermediate project managers.

The interviewer wants to see whether you know the PM theory and principles to know how a project should be opened, but they also want to see your experience in starting projects and what your approach is.

While there are best practices with regard to how to open a project, each project manager will have a different take on what works best for them. This is what the interviewer wants to see, whether your way of working is likely to excel in the organisation.

The best approach to answering this question

This is a blend of a technical and experience based question. The interviewer is not strictly asking you to provide an example (“Tell me about a time”) but your answer will always be stronger if you are able to highlight your experience in the area.

For this question the best approach to answering will be using a modified B-STAR answer.

Let’s look at how that would go:

B – Belief – Talk about your thoughts, feelings or philosophies regarding the question – In this instance you should answer the technical aspect to the question first. Detail how you usually start your projects, what do you like to get out of the way first, how do you prepare for success?

S/T – Situation/Task – What was going on and how were you involved? – Seamlessly segue from explaining how you normally start a project to describing an actual project that you were involved in.

A – Activity – What steps did you take and why? – Using the project described already run through the steps you took at the very beginning and explain why you took those actions.

R – Results – How did everything pan out in the end? – The interviewer has only really asked about how you start projects but since you’ve gone through all the effort of describing an actual project to them you may as well tell them how it finished (nobody likes an unfinished tale) remember though the bulk of your answer should be in the Activity stage.

How NOT to answer this question

Don’t sound like a textbook. The interviewer is not your teacher marking you on your project management essay, they will know full well what the supposed ‘best practices’ are for initiating a project. They are not interested in hearing that. They want to hear what you do first and why you think it important. Add some personality to your answer.

Don’t confuse the question. This is asking you what you do ‘first’. Not how you plan your projects or any other number of questions. Make sure your answer is directly about what you do first and why you feel that first step is the most important (or the one you give priority to out of all others)

Don’t avoid the question. If you’ve never worked a project in a professional setting then you need to go further afield, think outside the box. Think about volunteer work you have done, or some extra-curricular activities, have you ever organised a holiday with friends? Even a school project that you had to complete. Anything is better than saying “I have never done that”.

When you are given a new project what do you do first? – Example answer

The first thing I do when given a new project is to seek out the project sponsor and ensure that we are both on the same page. I prefer to do this face-to-face but will settle for a call or video conference if that is all that is available. I feel that at the start of a project it is crucial to make sure that nothing is lost in translation and that all expectations are clear.

In my current organisation the sponsor for most of my projects is the Chief Technology Officer. Just recently I was given a new project that would deploy a major upgrade to one of our core systems. I made sure that I caught a coffee meeting with the CTO so that we could discuss the project.

I enquired as to what the expectations were from both the business and from him personally. I find asking this is key as my CTO has higher expectations than the wider business so while the business was expecting delivery by the end of the year my CTO was expecting it much earlier.

Similarly with regard to quality and budget, the business had minimum quality requirements and a budget restraint. My CTO however had higher quality requirements and made me aware that the budget could be expanded if I needed it – something that was not in the project presentation provided by the business!

Finally I confirmed with the CTO which project members were available and made a mental note to which colleagues I had worked with before and which were new to me (for the new ones I tried to pry information from the CTO as to their skills and work style)

As far as first steps goes I feel like getting the project sponsor, in this case the CTO, to have a frank and open discussion as to the aims and expectations is the best thing to do. After my conversation with the CTO I was in a really good space to start my planning, with the next step being to bring the project members into the loop.

In the end we managed to deliver the upgrade within the timelines and meeting the quality expectations set by the CTO – something that might not have been given the proper attention had I not taken that first step.“

Interview Question: Tell me about a time where you were responsible for bringing people together to work on a project or piece of work? – Answer Tips

June 21, 2022 by Mike Jacobsen

Question forms part of

Civil Service Question Bank

What the interviewer is looking for by asking this question

Working Together is one of the core behaviours / competencies that is assessed when applying for jobs at the Civil Service. But it’s not just public sector jobs that will assess you on this, a lot of private sectors will as well. It probably won’t be called ‘Working Together’ when they ask but the questions will be similar. All about bring people together and working together to maximise output. Oftentimes cross-functionally.

A cross-functional team, also known as a multidisciplinary team or interdisciplinary team, is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. It may include people from finance, marketing, operations, and human resources departments. Wikipedia

With this particular question the interviewer wants to see that not only are you able to work cross-functionally but that you are capable of being the one that brings people together in the first place.

This means they want to know if you are able to understand the importance of bringing people together, whether you possess the people management skills required to facilitate working between different groups and finally they want to know if you have the experience of doing this before.

The best approach to answering this question

This is a ‘Tell me about a time’ question so your answer needs to use a relevant example. The best answers will follow the B-STAR method.

Here’s how that would look for this question:

B – Belief – What are your thoughts / feelings regarding people working cross-functionally. Talk about how you appreciate that some projects require different people with a range of skills and expertise and the best way you have found to get the most out of these people is to have them all work together, sharing ideas without any obstacles.

S – Situation – Describe the scenario to the interviewer. Remember that you only have a short amount of time to answer each question so ensure that you don’t get too involved in describing every minute detail of your example. High level descriptors only, if the interviewer wants to learn more they will ask follow-up questions at the end.

T – Task – What was your role in the situation? Take another look at the question, it says to talk about a time where you were responsible for bringing people together. So ensure that your role in the tale is correct and that you were the one in charge of setting up this cross functional team.

A – Activity – What steps did you take? Talk about how you first identified the need to bring people together, then talk about how you set about doing that.

R – Results – How did it all turn out? This is an interview so your example should have positive results that benefit the company. Try to mention how the result was a direct consequence of the team working together.

How NOT to answer this question

Do not have a passive role. It is not enough to have just worked together will people from different areas. This question is specifically about you bringing people together. Make sure your answer touches on how you sought out other people to work with for the betterment of your piece of work or project.

Do not talk about a failure. This is an interview, if you are allowed to boast at any time it is in an interview. You need to sell yourself to these people in order to land the job. It is much harder to do so if you give an example of a time that failed. Sure you might be able to spin the failure into a good learning experience and the interviewer might score that response highly. But it is much, much easier to score highly by giving a successful example.

Tell me about a time where you were responsible for bringing people together to work on a project or piece of work? – Example answer

“As a project manager I often have to deal with people from various areas of the business. At the start of every project I feel that it is important to have a range of differing expertises within the project team as I believe this produces a better environment for the fostering of ideas and eventually a better run project.

There was a project in my organisation recently which was established to deliver a new finance tool that would seek to automate some of the current manual functions being performed by the business.

I was asked to be the project manager on this project. In my first meeting with the project sponsor I advised that I would need to establish a cross-functional team to act as the project team.

The first step I took was to identify who I needed, I did this by examining the project scope and determining what expertises would be required and matching this to the expertises available within the organisation. I quickly realised that we were missing crucial team members so sought approval to being in vendors to fill the gap.

Once I had established all of my key players I produced a roles and responsibilities report so that all team members were aware of what was required by them, when it was required and who they could lean on for support.

I held daily stand-up meetings with the whole team so that any issues could be raised quickly and be resolved then and there. These meetings proved very useful in facilitating conversations between the various different business groups.

In the end the project was delivered successfully and the new automation tool reduced the process time by around 75% in the 3 months post-launch, a success I attribute in no small part to the smooth working of the team.

Experience

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