Situational Interview – Tell me about a time when……

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Shirrin S Patwa, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Situational interview questions are the most common type of interview technique. For this the interviewer may ask situational questions based on past experience or hypothetical scenarios. They are designed to test competencies ie. your ability to do the job.

The idea is to ask you to describe how you would handle a certain situation, or what you would do under certain difficult circumstances and to test if your personality and character are a good fit for the company.

The best way to answer these questions is to follow the below 3 step model:
1) Describe the problem or the situation
2) What did you do to resolve it
3) Outcome or the measurable results

Everyone enjoys a well-said and structured example, so answer any situational-based question with the above steps.

Review some of the sample questions an interviewer might ask and practice answering them in advance with your friends, such as:
Tell me about a situation when you had to work with a difficult team member and how did you handle the situation when you had a tight deadline.
Describe a situation where you had to deal with a difficult customer that wanted to complain against you.
Tell me about a time when you made an error which had a huge impact on the business.

The above are question that target specific skills sets. However; you should also be prepared to answer generic questions such as:
How do you manage a tight deadline?
How did you solve a difficult problem?
Give an example of a situation where you had to take the initiative to solve a problem

For such questions, you first need to understand what skills the interviewer are probing you for.

The best bet is to describe the situation concisely, what you did to solve the problems and the results which will clearly highlight couple of the skills – the interviewers are always looking for a range of skills in a candidate.

You don’t need to be nervous to answer any of the situational interview questions because you already possess the skills needed to answer them and that’s why you got the interview call.

The key is to communicate clearly.

You’ll find sample situational interview questions by visiting my website.