By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
In this video, I discuss several ways to answer this trap question.
Tell Me About a Time You Made a Productive Change at a Company helpful.
Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I’m referred to as The Big Game Hunter because I’ve been hunting down leaders and staff for organizations for more than 40 years. Here’s one of those fun interview questions.
You know, it’s a question that’s designed to, not through the specific of the answer, but the explanation that follows, cause you to reveal things about yourself that you probably shouldn’t reveal. So, here’s the question. What have you done professionally that you’ve succeeded at, but isn’t an experience you’d ever want to repeat? I love that question.
Now, hee rare three possible ways to answer. First of all, first way you can answer it is by talking about some menial task that you had to do. But you have to make sure that you don’t describe it as being unsatisfying and as though you’re above it all.
You know, you can think like a sports team. There are people in baseball who have to sacrifice themselves in order to move a runner over. Or you can talk about that time you swept the floor or stuffed envelopes.
And, you know, you understand the importance of the role. Place has to stay clean. You know, envelopes have to go out.
And, you know, you did it well, but it’s not something that really causes your mind to stay active. You coped with it. You put best effort into it.
But at the end of the day, it’s not something you enjoy doing. That’s one way to answer it. Another way is by talking about something that was team related.
You worked on this project with other people and you described your role on it. Maybe there were difficult personalities on it. Maybe there were people who just couldn’t see eye to eye and a lot of the team was bumping heads with one another.
You tried to be a mediator at times and work on getting collaboration. But there were some personalities there who just didn’t want to collaborate. They just wanted to rule.
And you talk about your efforts. We got the thing going. You contributed to making it effective.
Some people got ostracized on the project. It was a tough experience, but you all pulled together. Almost all of you pulled together and brought it home.
Third way to answer it, you did something that was really hard. You know, you have to talk about what made it hard. Maybe it was because it was poorly planned.
Maybe it was badly executed, whatever it was. Don’t talk about the blame. Talk about the difficulty in delivering what it was that everyone had committed to do.
And maybe it was the planning. You weren’t involved with that. But at the end of the day, you did your part.
Others did theirs. Some people didn’t do it. It eventually came through.
It wasn’t necessarily on time. You know, you get the idea. But the idea is talk about something extremely hard, probably from a planning standpoint, being the failure is the easiest case to work with.
And then work from there on describing what made it so hard. I’m Jeff Altman. Hope you found this helpful.
Visit TheBigGameHunter.us. There’s a lot more there you can watch, listen to or read to help you find work more quickly. I’ve got more tough interview questions in my blog there. Also, if we’re not connected on LinkedIn, send a connection request to LinkedIn.com forward slash high end forward slash TheBigGameHunter.
I accept connection requests from people worldwide. Finally, folks need help with their job search and often ask the wrong people for advice. Friends, family, other individuals who are well meaning but don’t really know what’s needed.
I’m someone with more than 40 years of search experience, written eight books about job hunting. You know, I could go on with a lengthy bio, but you could find that find that bio on my website. I’d be happy to answer your questions.
You can reach me in one of two ways. First is through PrestoExperts.com where I’m a job searching career coaching expert. Second way is you can schedule through my website.
Again, that site is TheBigGameHunter.us. Order time from me. We’ll schedule it. I always go long.
I’d be happy to help you. I’m Jeff Altman. Hope you enjoyed this.Hope you found it helpful and hope you have a great day.
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
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He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 3000 episodes over 14+ years.
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