Page 75 - You're Hired! Interview Answers

taSk-BaSed QueStionS examPLe inteRview anSweRS exhibitions were relevant to us at all – in fact I think we should have pulled
them – and I’d have been really unhappy about putting Excom at risk so I think

it was the right decision.”

This is a task-based question; the key terms are ‘deliver’ and ‘tight deadline’.
The answer above does not give a convincing picture in these terms. All we
discover from this answer is that ‘some decisions were made about priorities’
and that ‘some work was outsourced’; we can’t be sure about this person’s role
in the process because of the use of ‘we’. The rest of the answer focuses on
negative aspects and tells us nothing about the result. The upshot is that the
interviewer has not learned much about this person’s approach to delivering
under pressure, which is the purpose of the question.

3 Better answer:

“We were under a lot of pressure in marketing because we had to prepare for

three exhibitions all with tight deadlines. The exhibitions were all in mid-
May and we were already in April. The lead time was five weeks, which is very
tight to get all the design work done and I could see we had a problem.
I decided to prioritise the Excom work and to outsource the design of the other
two exhibitions, which were less critical in terms of our marketing plan.
I made it clear to the team that the Excom material had to be ready for proofing
in 3 weeks and I built a daily checklist to make sure we were on target.
I used the same approach with the outsourced design, getting daily updates
from the design agencies to track progress and to make sure there would be
no surprises in terms of the costs. In the end we hit the target for all three

exhibitions and I was very happy with the design quality we achieved.”

Hopefully you can see why this is better. Think of CaR again:

n Circumstances: the nature and timing of the deadline are explained.
n action: we now know what was done, how progress was monitored and

what objectives were imposed.
n Result: we have a clear statement that the deadline was met to the right

quality standards.

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