Page 141 - How To Answer Interview Questions (II)

Job Interview Question 74

What if you worked for someone who managed to take credit for all
your great ideas?

How would you handle it?

Hopefully, by asking this question, the interviewer is only trying to get a sense of how you deal with
conflict and not warning you that they are about to take credit for all your great ideas.

With conflict questions in general, the interviewer wants to know several things:

How do you see your role at work?
What is your communication style?
Do you remain calm?
Do you confront issues head on?
Do you try to keep the peace at all costs?
Do you take things to HR, or handle them yourself?
How do you approach the situation and how do you come up with solutions?
I probably would try to inject a little humor into this answer:
“Well, part of my job is certainly to make my boss look good, and my great ideas are part of that. I
certainly want my boss to be recognized and rewarded for having the good sense to hire me!”
Or, you could just cut to the bottom line:
“Well, part of my job is to provide great ideas that make my boss look good. If I were being
rewarded by my boss with raises and promotions, I would be happy.”
(And then I would probably go home and get on LinkedIn or Facebook and try to find people who