Page 145 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

PeoPLe-BaSed QueStionS examPLe inteRview anSweRS interviewer: the team you would be leading has been
together for a long time now; can you give me an example
of a situation where you have had to integrate yourself in
this way?

7 Poor answer:

“My feeling is that you have to clear the air straight away so that people

know exactly where you’re coming from. When I was parachuted in as head
of marketing at ABC Ltd I knew that it was going to be tough getting them
to accept me. My remit was – quite frankly – to knock some heads together
because business performance had been so poor. At my first meeting I
decided that a ‘hard but fair’ approach was going to work best, so I made it
clear that performance was going to be the only yardstick that I was interested
in. I’m very open and honest in my style – I think it’s the only way you can
build trust at senior level – and I think they did find me quite blunt for the first

3 months, but it got results.”

This is certainly an honest answer but it falls into a category of ‘all or nothing’
responses. What it does not show is any degree of subtlety or flexibility. The ‘I
am what I am’ approach is courageous but risky, because its success depends
on this person’s style happening to fit the circumstances. What if the team to
be led are already high performing? What if they are delivering great results
under a lot of pressure and need support rather than ‘hard but fair’?

3 Better answer:

“At ABC Ltd it was clear that I was entering a difficult situation; I had taken

some soundings from other department heads and they told me that the team
was having a tough time at the moment and that they were underperforming.
My approach was to have one-to-one meetings with all the marketing directors
to find out what the true situation was and get a sense for how people were
feeling. I didn’t want to go barging in without having some sense for the team’s
capability, and the meetings helped a lot. I didn’t have a lot of time, given the
pressure we were under but that original investment in getting to know them
paid off, they were working in silos and I had to get them talking to each other.
I eventually moved a couple of the directors to other roles, but because I had
got to know the team, people could see the rationale for my decisions and

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