Page 101 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

thought-BaSed QueStionS examPLe inteRview anSweRS interviewer: tell me about a time where you encountered
a significant problem with a system, process or procedure.
how did you solve it?

7 Poor answer:

“I had felt for a while that our internal resourcing was not very effective. Being a

consulting business, how we resourced obviously had implications on the quality
of our work and bottom line performance. I therefore suggested that it would be
better if one person took on overall responsibility for the resourcing of work. This
would mean that one person had the overall, big picture view of how resource

was being used.”

Why is this a poor response? For a start, it is very brief and gives no depth
around any aspects of CAR. It has the foundations of a good response, though,
as it is clearly about an improvement. Let’s look at a better response.

This time we’ll give you two possible responses, based on different work
scenarios.

3 Better answer:

“I used to work in a resourcing role in a small business where I was responsible

for ensuring that our consultants were used in an equitable way. In reality what
happened was that when a piece of work came in, project managers would
speak to staff directly and allocate work to them. This came to my attention, as
consultants would speak to me and complain that they felt work was not being
allocated in an equitable way. Our staff survey had also shown a degree of
favouritism occurring. So the current system was not working effectively. I made
suggestions that all resourcing would need to go through a central person who
would take account of availability, skills, performance and so on and discuss
with project managers what the resourcing options would be. Rather than me
dictating resourcing, it became a joint problem-solving exercise and ensured
that project managers were still involved in the process. Feedback so far is that

people feel resourcing is now more equitable.”

The above example demonstrates that a response need not be lengthy – it can
be short and punchy. It is also a well structured response around CaR.

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