Page 50 - How To Answer Interview Questions (II)

Job Interview Question 20

Have you had to turn an employee with a bad attitude into one
with a good attitude?

We’ve all encountered the person in the office who causes trouble—they gossip, bully, or cause
dissension; they are disrespectful and uncooperative; they gripe about the company/the workload/the
long hours/the ugly office/etc., they spend a lot of time goofing off, spending time on Facebook or
Pinterest, taking long lunches, calling in sick constantly, or otherwise not pulling their weight.

Some companies want you to cut those people loose as soon as possible, but some companies want
to try to save them. After all, there was a reason they were hired in the first place and they’d like to
have that person. Besides, the process you have to follow in some companies is long and daunting,
and hiring someone new is expensive and time-consuming.

If you have a story where you’ve taken someone like that and turned them around, it shows you as a
tremendous communicator and motivator—two excellent qualities in a manager.

They want to see that you can take action when an employee causes a drain on the morale or
productivity of your department. These things can snowball and ruin a previously well-running
program.

Any number of ways you could have approached this situation is a good story to tell, as long as the
outcome was a positive one:

The employee was stuck in a job beyond his or her capabilities, so you gave them a personality
test, found another position that fit them much better, moved them over, and now everyone is
happy and thriving.
The employee had excellent hard skills but sub-par communication skills, so you sent them to a
class to improve his communication and he came back a new person.
The company made a mistake in a new policy that negatively affected the employee, and they