- How do you organize your work when you have to juggle multiple projects/clients at the same time?
- If you’re reporting to more than one manager, how do you prioritize your duties?
- Describe a typical day at work. …
- How much time do you spend per week on X task?
CONFLICTING PRIORITIES Interview Question and Answer
Start With: How You Map Out Your Day
Whether you’re a fan of to-do lists or swear by spreadsheets, be specific about how you manage your daily workload. Your potential employer wants to know they can count on you to get work done without someone standing over your shoulder.
Everyone has a different method of managing their workload, so it doesn’t matter if yours is boring, or even a little quirky. The key is to be as detailed and thorough as possible. Potential employers want to know you’re organized and put real thought into your daily routine.
An example of this could be:
“I’d be lost without my daily to-do list! At the beginning of each workday, I write out tasks to complete, and list them from highest to lowest priority. This helps with my workflow and keeps me on track with what needs to get done for the day.”
Next Add: How You Approach Shifting Priorities
It’s common at work to start one project, only to find out halfway through that you need to shift gears and focus elsewhere. Sometimes it’s an emergency or something truly urgent that you have to drop everything for; other times it’s just a task your boss hands to you at the last minute. Yes, it’s annoying, but it comes with the territory at most jobs.
So after you share your tried-and-true method for prioritizing work, also mention how you typically handle a situation when changes occur. This helps to show you’re mindful of high-level company priorities. The most detailed spreadsheet or to-do list means nothing if it’s completely unrelated to what your department is trying to accomplish.
To get this point across, you might say:
“My to-do list helps me maintain a steady workflow, but I also realize priorities change unexpectedly. With that in mind, I try not to overload my list with too many tasks, to make room for any necessary adjustments.
“On one particular day recently, I had planned to spend most of my time making phone calls to advertising agencies to get price quotes for an upcoming campaign. Then I did a quick check-in with my manager. She mentioned she needed help putting together a presentation ASAP for a major potential client.
“I moved the other task to the end of the week and spent the next few hours updating the presentation. While there was flexibility in getting quotes for the campaign, the presentation was much more time-sensitive—and it was also way more important to make a good first impression for the potential client.”
What Are Time Management & Prioritization Interview Questions?
During a job interview, the hiring manager wants to find out how you manage your time and how you make prioritization decisions. For them, employees who possess the right skills in these areas are able to:
Candidates who possess these skills or those who have the growth potential to acquire them are the ones that hiring managers look for. They want to know if you are able to deal with different tasks with different deadlines. Furthermore, if you can do so without getting stressed out or forgetting what you need to do.
When an interviewer asks you about your time management and prioritization skills, they are trying to gauge how well you manage your resources. Furthermore, they want to get an idea about your flexibility in your approach to ensure that you can still produce quality work.
Why the interviewer is asking this question: This question is both about how you handle priorities as well as working under pressure. Most jobs entail some level of inability to complete all tasks, so the ability to prioritize in a confident manner is a key work competency, both for individual contributors as well as managers.
The best approach to answering this question: Focus on a time when you had to get others involved in setting and approving the prioritization of your work tasks and/or projects. Ideally, this would include your manager, but could also include other team members as well as external managers who are requesting your time.
An example of how to best answer this question for entry level candidates: “During my summer internship, I was assigned both a primary project as well as maintenance of an existing project. However, the existing project was getting so many support requests that it made it difficult for me to schedule time for my primary project. So two weeks into my internship, I met with my boss to discuss the prioritization conflict and we were able to work out a schedule that allowed me to respond to both the most urgent and important support tasks as well as completing my primary project. The end result is that I received two awards that summer, both for my primary project as well as my quick response to several important issues with my support project…”
An example of how you should not answer this question: “Well, I recently had to decide between going out to party with my friends or studying for midterms the following day. So I decided I would do both. I would go out to party with my friends first, then I would come home to study. Win, win, right? But I got so hammered at the party that I ended up passing out, then woke up in the middle of the night not knowing where I was. I finally found my way back home and started studying and I know what you might be thinking, but I ended up getting an A on my midterm. So I can clearly multitask my priorities…” Remember to answer each interview question behaviorally, whether it is a behavioral question or not. The easiest way to do this is to use an example from your background and experience. Then use the S-T-A-R approach to make the answer a STAR: talk about a Situation or Task (S-T), the Action you took (A) and the Results achieved (R). This is what makes your interview answer uniquely yours and will make your answer a star!
An example of how to best answer this question for experienced candidates: “My job has multiple conflicting priorities where it can be difficult to know what is most important and urgent. My boss and I worked out an important/urgent scale for rating tasks so that it is clear what takes the highest priority. If something is both important and urgent, it gets highest priority. Important but not urgent is next and urgent but not important is next, then not important and not urgent is last. My boss knows the rating system and even codes request as IU, INU, UNI and NINU when sending them to me. As a result, my overall productivity in the past year has gone up considerably as benchmarked against prior to using our prioritization rating system…”
FAQ
How do you answer priority interview questions?
- Answer option 1: Tell them about your typical day. Explain to the hiring manager how you manage your daily workload. …
- Answer option 2: Talk about how you prioritize under pressure. …
- Answer option 3: Talk about how you maintain a work/life balance.
What is your priority interview questions?
- Describe how you schedule your day. …
- Explain how you shift between priorities. …
- Discuss how you set your deadlines. …
- Tell how you maintain work-life balance. …
- Connect your answer to the job requirements.
What are your top 3 priorities at work?
- Learning the Ropes. One of your top priorities in a new job should be learning the ropes. …
- Building Relationships. Another top priority in a new job should be building relationships with your colleagues. …
- Delivering Results.
