I find this question quite challenging, and my responses often feel overly simplistic. For instance, when faced with a difficult customer, I might say, “I remained patient and persistent.” If I struggled with mastering a skateboard trick, my answer might be, “I continued to practice.” And in the case of an unfair boss, I would probably say, “I addressed the issue by talking to them.” It does indeed seem like I’m stating the obvious in these scenarios.
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This is just the STAR method in action.
They just want to hear a glossy answer of when you ran into a bad situation and how you solved it. Hype as much as you can.
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Overhype the boring answer. Sounds like spewing my resume LOL.
Thank you, though, I’ll keep this in mind.
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Yeah, I can never take interviews seriously anymore. Do people who read it not feel embarrassed for me? Cause I feel embarrassed just faking everything and writing it down.
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Everyone has different challenges and approaches to problem-solving. The purpose of the question, in my experience, is to evaluate how you approach problems and see if it aligns with the company culture.
You need to find an example of a challenge that you personally, solved and then describe how you approached a solution.
Take the kickboard story, for example. Did you just keep doing the same failed motions over and over again until you miraculously got it right? Or did you try different movements, build muscle memory, or watch successful attempts to learn best practices?
The how is the important part, not the challenge. And if you can connect how you solved the challenge to how you would approach other problems, that’s even better.
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The answer is the approach to the solution, not the actual solution. That helps a ton. Thank you!
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“When I was a few years in here, I realized I was not going to move up in this company or any company if I didn’t spend some time working on my skills. I knew that I had the work ethic and the feedback from my leadership was my skills and knowledge needed work. It’s a difficult pill to swallow at the time. I was a father and husband and full time employee but I decided that this was not going to hold me back……” and blabber on about things you have done to improve your skills. I am a senior manager at a fortune 100. It’s worked 3 promotions and counting.
Oh yes my go to answer is on how I deal with out of scope request and project creep from clients…
Handling project creep is a great example!
Yes. The question is designed to get the prospect employee to volunteer a weakness… this answer does the opposite show your detailed orientat, understand project scope and have good customer relaction skills
I know bad hiring managers misuse it that way. Still, it has more probative value as an evaluation of your problem-solving skills than as a gotcha to uncover a disqualifying weakness.
If you answer the question as if the person asking isn’t a complete moron(even if they are, in fact, a moron), you will present as a better candidate than if you give a fluff answer about being too hard a worker or whatever other “beat the system” trick you think the interviewer wants to hear.
I got that question. You can literally make up anything. Think of a time at work, or okay, where you had a conflict. I always use not getting along with a coworker, going to the supervisor to mediate and have us talk, then it looks like I solved a problem by being proactive.