Teamwork

The ability to work well with others is a critical skill for virtually any job. The interviewers definitely want to know your working style and assess whether they want you as a teammate. In this question, they will pay special attention to:

How do you work with others?
How do you view your teammates?
How dependable are you?

Working with Difficult People

Questions: Tell me about a time you needed to get information from someone who wasn’t very responsive. What did you do?

What is the interviewer looking for: We all run into situations where someone doesn’t respond to our emails. There are many possible reasons:

This person is hard to work with,
This person does not know you or your project,
This person is very swamped, and your ask is not even close to the top of their priority list,
You have done something that offended them, but you are not even aware, or
Their manager and your manager are not aligned. The person wants to help but got a different direction from their manager.

The interviewers are looking for:

Your action to uncover the reasons behind this person’s lack of response,
Your concrete steps to win over their support and response, and
Your ability to seek collaboration when the other party does not seem like collaborative.

Best practice to answer: You should follow the STAR method to explain the situation, in particular, what actions have you taken to uncover the reasons behind this person’s lack of response and take appropriate follow-up steps. For example,

If your project is not high on the person’s priority, you should find ways to get priorities aligned. You may be able to do this by stopping by their desk or leveraging your manager or their manager’s help.
If they are swamped with high priority deliverables, can you ask another person to help? Alternatively, can you recommend someone else to help you?
If the managers are not aligned, should you try to talk to the manager directly or push your manager to work with the other manager to get aligned?

Overall, you need to be empathetic to understand why the person is not very responsive. Do not draw a conclusion that the other person is hard to work with without looking more into their challenges. Once you have a better understanding of the situation, you can come up with the right ways to get help on your project by being assertive without being aggressive.

Common pitfalls:

Quickly jumping to a conclusion that the person is hard to work with.
Relying too much on escalation.
Showing aggression in your communication.

Question variations:

How do you deal with difficult people on your team?
How to handle it if another team’s priority is not aligned with yours?

Tailor your Style to Drive Success

Question: Tell me about a time you had to adjust to a colleague’s style in order to complete a project.

What is the interviewer looking for: Everybody is different. A method may work for some, but may not work for others at all. The most successful individuals know how to tailor their style based on the other person’s/team’s style and preference. The interviewer is looking for flexibility to form healthy work relationship and get the job done.

Best practice to answer: Use STAR framework, go deep on your effort to understand this person’s style, seek advice from others on how to best work with this person, and tailor your message to an approach that is more acceptable to her. Please explain how you were able to figure out ways to partner with her or motivate her to get the project down.

Common pitfalls:

Sound overly critical about your colleague
Do not spend enough time to know the colleague

Question variations:

How do you adapt yourself in adverse team environments?
How flexible can you be?

Experience of influencing others

Question: Tell me about a time when you had to convince another staff member or leader, whom you had no direct authority over, to buy into a new idea or project? How did you accomplish this?

What is the interviewer looking for: Ability to influence without authority is a key skill at work. No matter whether you are a junior or a senior member, there are times you need to get others to support your plan. The other party could be in your team, in the cross-functional team on the same project, in another project team, or even outside your company. To effectively influence others, one has to communicate well and build trust with others. From your answer, the interviewers can easily tell whether you had experience influencing others. They will be assessing your answer with the following questions in mind:

How difficult was the situation,
How do you identify the right stakeholders to influence,
How sophisticated were your tactics,
How effective was your approach,
How well you listened to others’ concern, and
How creative you are to address others’ concern

Best practice to answer: First of all, before the persuasion, demonstrate that you have a comprehensive picture of the topic you are trying to influence. Otherwise, you will lose your credibility with the stakeholders. This requires you to identify the right stakeholders and reach out to them, listen to them, capture relevant context, especially key stakeholders’ point of view. Secondly, identify the options and the tradeoff between different options, be open to discuss the options and choose the one that works the best for the organization.

In the interview, explain clearly what you have done to identify the options, adjust your proposal based on input from the stakeholders, and drive everyone to agreement and commitment after the decision. Clearly demonstrate it is your stewardship that led to the success of the project.

Common pitfalls:

Trivial examples. Your example is too trivial, then the interviewer will think you do not have more complicated experience of influencing others.
Lack of detail on why it was challenging and the actions you have taken to win over others’ support

Question variations:

Describe a situation that you successfully convinced someone to support your idea
Describe a case you have convinced your manager to change her view on something.
Describe a case that you successfully assembled a team to support your initiative.