By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
This behavioral interview question has suddenly become popular with interviewers. Here, I explain how you might answer it depending upon your seniority and circumstances.
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I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I’m the head coach for JobSearch.Community. And welcome to another show. You know, as I’m recording this, I’m in a great mood.
And it kind of fits with the question that I’m going to be doing an answer for. So this is one of those tough interview questions designed to make you worry, confess, blank, you know, freak you out. And it’s really easy to do.
So here’s the question. Ready? Tell me about a time in the last week where you felt energized, productive, satisfied. I prefer excited, because that’s really the key to this excited at work.
And what were you doing? Great question. Because what they’re going to do is see if you’re just another drone. If you’re so dead inside that you can’t put anything in front of them.
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Now, there’s two . . . actually, depending upon your level of experience, sorry, I’ve got my hands confused there. Depending upon your level of experience, you should be talking about different things. And then I’ve got the third answer.
So if you’re relatively senior in an organization, you might talk about, you know, coaching someone on your team and seeing the light go on upstairs, as they got a particular idea, and how exciting that was for you. You might talk about a moment in the last week, where your team just came together in a purposeful way, and really left the meeting excited. And you can joke and say, how many times do you think that happens? So that was a great moment for me to see the team pull together, not be, I don’t want to say cross purposes, but all come together and go out and start working together well on this new thing we were working on or on fixing a problem that existed or whatever it was.
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If you’re a staff level individual, I’m going to get to some details in a second. If you’re a staff level individual, you talk about getting so immersed in something, maybe you’re working with someone else, maybe you’re working by yourself, and you got so engrossed in something that time just disappeared. And you finished up the problem, you realized it was seven o’clock, and you’ve been at your desk all day.
You got so engrossed in this issue, and making sure that it was done well, you get where I’m going with that. Now, another option is to say, you know, that’s the problem. If you ask me about something I’ve been excited about in the last week, yeah, there’s some personal things.
There’s some small details. But overall, I’m looking for a challenge that I can really attack. I’ve been working on this project now for five years.
There’s nothing new there. That’s why I’m looking at something else. Now, in answering the question, think in terms of a story.
And the format for a story that I teach is using the acronym SOAR. I know Star has a big advocacy for it. But that stands for situation or task, the action that you took result.
I prefer SOAR, which is slightly different situation, objective, action, result. So the situation I was in was such and such. And thus, the objective that I had was this, the action that I took was such and then the result was this.
And you can use that acronym, SOAR, S-O-A-R, in answering this question, as well, in talking about how you really got together with . . . I’ll deal with the senior manager, got together with this one individual who just looked like they were frustrated. And you noticed it over the last few days, you didn’t want it to fester, where you could lose their best effort. So what you decided to do is to sit down with them and have a heart to heart with them.
So you met with them, talked with them for about 20 minutes, understood that they were withholding something about their personal life that was frustrating. And the result was that they felt cared for. You could see the energy come back into their face.
You know, that’s sort of an answer works very well. And whether you’re a staff individual, or the frustrated employee, use this acronym, SOAR, situation, objective, action, result, in framing your answer to a question like this. Hope you found this helpful.
I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. If you’re interested in my doing one on one coaching with you, connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter. Mention that you saw this video because I’m just curious.
How did you find me? And then from there, once we’re connected and you’re interested in coaching, message me. We’ll schedule a time to speak. If you’d like to get the best information I have available, curated stuff that you can watch, listen to or read, including all my books and guides to job hunting.
It’s more than 20 products and some great YouTube videos and podcasts. Visit JobSearch.Community. It’s a membership site. You pay monthly.
You also get discounts on one on one coaching with me. I hope to be able to help you. Have a great day.
Take care
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
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