Welcome back to the C Suite, staff! It is your favorite exec, BowtiedCEO.
I have decided to launch a guide that will go through the Top 20 standard interview questions. This will be a comprehensive guide that analyzes each of these interview questions in a five part series, plus an introduction on basic interview techniques and things to know.
Over the next few months, I will post 20 interview questions in 5 parts and outline:
Why they are asked by the interviewer
What the interviewer is trying to gauge from the question
Ways to answer each
Sample answers to each question
In Part 2 of the guide I have discussed questions 6 through 10 of the classic interview questions that most hiring managers will ask. In each of these questions are the background as to why a hiring manager would ask the question, what they want to hear, what you should say depending on the situation AND sample answers that will make any hiring manager want to offer you a job.
The questions in this portion of the guide are:
6) Have you ever worked with a difficult person and how did you handle it?
7) Where do you see yourself in [x] years?
8) What are your salary expectations?
9) What can you bring to this company?
10) What are your career goals?
To get the full guide, you can purchase it here: Job Interview Q&A Guide
6) Have you ever worked with a difficult person and how did you handle it?
For this question, you will want to answer it similarly to question 4 (Give me an example of a time when you had to deal with a difficult situation and how you handled it), but this time you have to describe a person or group of people.
When answering this question, it is important that the outcome of dealing with the difficult person be one of two things:
A change of behavior in the person you were dealing with AND that change led to a positive outcome.
An outcome that you predicted or knew would occur and the difficult person ended up making a bad decision.
For both of these types of responses, the answer should really be tailored to the audience, specifically who the interviewer is at the time. The answer you give to someone ranked above you should be different than for someone ranked at your level or lower. What if you have mixed ranks in the same interview? This would default to the answer you would give for the lower ranked person, therefore the highest ranked person in the room is your guide. I have a breakdown in the table below.
If you are interviewing with someone at your rank or lower, describe a manager who was difficult and what occurred. If the interviewer out ranks you, describe a time you dealt with a difficult person at an equal or lower rank than you.
This will prevent the interviewers from thinking negatively about your response because they may empathize with the difficult person you are describing. We are trying to avoid this type of empathy for this specific question, so that it doesn’t result in a negative feeling toward your answer.
Here are four examples using the STAR method, for each scenario:
Higher Ranked Interviewer:
I had an employee who was having productivity issues. This had been going on for about a month. At a 1v1 we had, I asked them why their performance had declined. They stated that they were having some mental health issues with the recent loss of their pet. I listened and consoled them, but also advised them to seek help for their trauma. I knew that an employee benefit through our company was to speak to a licensed therapist. They started speaking with them and over the next few months their performance returned.
I worked with a colleague who openly challenged leadership’s decisions publicly. They would also do it in meetings with colleagues, including myself. It was at a point that they developed a negative reputation for this behavior, as they had been doing it consistently without any value add. One day, in a 1v1, I asked them why they seemed to challenge so many decisions or ideas, as it did not come across positively. They said that was just their nature and they felt they needed to. I advised them to improve their awareness of how they came across to others when they challenged people, especially leadership. Two months after that meeting, this person challenged leadership openly again and the leader did not appreciate it. An argument then occurred between the two. A week later my colleague was terminated for insubordination.
Lower Ranked Interviewer:
I was working with a Director who was overlooking some of the negative feedback about one of his employees. His employee had a reputation of being unproductive. My team and I showed him his employees productivity metrics and it was clear that the employee with the reputation was lagging behind his peers. The Director then put this employee on a performance improvement plan and, remarkably, the employee improved over the next 6 months.
I was working closely with a VP of Operations on the financial due diligence of an acquisition that they would have absorbed if the acquisition was approved. There were certain data points that we disagreed on including. I advised them that we should include them, as it shows the full picture, and the results of the due diligence did not produce an analysis that showed this venture would be profitable. The VP insisted we exclude those data points and make that the final analysis, since that version showed profitability. I sent both versions to my boss and the VP, stating my recommendation to not go forward with the acquisition. The VP presented the analysis they wanted to the board and the acquisition was completed. 3 years later, the acquisition was sold off because it was not profitable.