Prioritization and Time Management

Many items are due tomorrow and they are all important. Sounds familiar? Yes, we all often face this situation, if not daily. Your ability to make hard decisions on priorities is not only critical to keeping your schedule and life sane but also essential for business success.

The reality is that there are no infinite resources to tackle all the problems. Ability to prioritize is critical for us as individuals and for the organization that each of us is in. For questions related to prioritization, the interviewers are trying to assess your ability to:

  • Stay focused to meet deadlines,
  • Manage workload effectively by prioritization,
  • Adapt to change and stay on course,
  • Control stress when dealing with multiple tasks.

Prioritize Many Important Items

What is the interviewer looking for: Conflicting priorities happen on a regular basis to many of us. The interviewers want to hear how you assess the situation and pick up the right tools. Below are some popular ways one can use:

  • Deprioritize some items,
  • Reduce scope to focus on what you have to get done by the deadline,
  • Negotiate the deadline,
  • Ask for help, and
  • Organize time effectively.

Best practice to answer: Use the STAR framework to choose a situation you were in, the task that had to be done, the challenges you faced, the actions you took and the resulting outcome. Demonstrate how you analyzed the situation, why you decided to take certain actions, why did you de-prioritize some items, how did you get buy-in to reduce scope or change deadline, whom did you go to seek help, your manager or someone else. You want to give an overall picture to illustrate that you are comfortable in using different tools as needed.

Common pitfalls:

  • Demonstrating that you were in the situation because of procrastination
  • Relying solely on escalation: Escalation is useful and sometimes necessary, but if it is the only way to solve problems, it is likely, something is missing.

Question variations:

  • You feel the timeline given by management is unrealistic. How do you handle it?
  • How do you manage your time to achieve high efficiency?

Overcome a Project Delay

What is the interviewer looking for: Most projects in the industry are delayed. Thus, this is a true real-life challenge that each one of us will face. Here are a few things that the interviewers might be looking for, in your answer:

  • How much real project experience do you have?
  • How effectively have you managed the delay?
  • How did you handle the stress?

Best practice to answer: Pick up a real life experience. It is perfectly fine to acknowledge that you were part of the reason for the initial delay. It often happens that we uncover new challenges as the project proceeds. What is important is that you are able to discover the delay in a timely manner, maintain cool and calm, analyze the situation, get extra hands, reduce scope, better-streamline dependencies, or motivate your entire team to work extra hours, to turn the project around.

Common pitfalls:

  • Claim you are always on time, never experienced a project delay. Seriously? All interviewers know it is not true. Even if you are truthful, it probably shows you do not have much real life project experience.
  • Blame the delay on your teammates. It might be the case, but it is never a good practice to blame on your teammates. It is very convenient for you to use them as a good excuse. It is also very convenient for the interviewers to vote you down.

Question variations:

  • How do you make sure your projects are on time?
  • How do you recognize that your projects are not on the right trajectory?

What is Your Daily Routine?

What is the interviewer looking for: The interviewer is trying to assess the kind of work environment you are familiar with. Is it fast pace or slow pace? If it is a fast pace, how do you manage your priorities and time? From your answer, the interviewer can probably get a good sense on how aggressive you are with your work schedule.

Best practice to answer: Do not simply enumerate the laundry list that you do everyday. That is not what the interviewer is asking for. Instead, focus on how much time you spend on technical work, how much on meetings. Do not forget the time you spend to think and find creative new ways to solve problems. This is also a good opportunity to demonstrate how you keep up with what’s new in the industry and commit to learn new things. For example, attending meetups, reading blogs, etc.

In terms of priorities, you may want to cover short-term priorities and medium-term priorities. What tools do you use to keep your day organized? Purely on calendar? Or something else. For medium-term, do you use something like OKRs to keep your priorities structured? Anyway, explain clearly the tools you are using.

When balancing different priorities, please note timeline is not the only factor that drives priority. In the technology world, quality is definitely another key dimension to consider and cover. To launch the right product, in some companies, it is perfectly fine to delay. Make it clear that you manage priorities considering all factors, not just the deadline.

Common pitfalls:

  • Get into too much detail about your daily routine detail. Focus on key things, such as how much time do you spend on writing code each day, how much time in meetings.

  • Be too rigid about your priority. The reality is that in most cases, you prioritize based on what is needed by your work and your family.

  • Do not cover the time you spend to catch up with the industry and learn new things. It is important for you to show you are a lifetime learner.

Question variations:

  • How do you find time to keep yourself updated with what is going on?
  • How do you prioritize between timeline, quality, and work life balance?