Page 133 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

PeoPLe-BaSed QueStionS examPLe inteRview anSweRS interviewer: Can you tell me about a time when you have
had to communicate a tough decision about an individual
or team? how did you go about it?

7 Poor answer:

“OK, well after the merger at my last job, it was clear that the marketing

department was overstaffed and that we would have to make some
redundancies. I have always believed that ‘clean and fast’ is the best way of
communicating this kind of news so I took a lot of time to draft a letter to each
individual explaining that jobs were at risk and describing the process we
were going to go through in detail. I got a lot of help from HR because it’s so
important to get the details right. I made sure that everyone got the letter on
their desks at the same time and I made it clear that HR would be available to

deal with any questions that they had.”

This is a task-based answer – it says what the person did but it does not
pick up on the subtleties of human communication and behaviour that the
interviewer is really interested in. Interpersonal style does not come through
and the interviewer is going to have to ask a lot of follow-up questions to get
at this detail. There is also a risk that, having noted the task-based approach
to the issue, the interviewer will be looking for evidence that this is indeed the
emphasis of this person’s style and that the more subtle emotional intelligence
skills are missing; in other words, the interviewer will now check for still more
negative evidence. Let’s see what happens with the probe questions.

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