As a part of my career coaching practice I work with clients to coach them for effective interviews. In my last blog, Sabotaging Your Own Interview, I listed some of the common ways one can derail, even scuttle their own interview. Most of these focused on asking questions that raise doubts about your sensibilities in the interviewer’s mind. In this blog I’d like to focus on what to do when you are thrown a question that you cannot answer without revealing your weakness or even aversion to the topic. Inevitably, such an answer, though honest, can raise doubts about your competency, or even your presence of mind during critical times, an important trait for any leadership position.
One recent example that I came across was a person, who had been a program manager on many high-tech projects with the responsibilities to release critical products by working with many different functional areas. In the job description for the job my client was after, one of the items was managing budgets so that the products are released within the financial parameters for each project. She was scheduled for a series of executive interviews for this job. This budget element was something new that the company was going to implement, but was going to be the part of the job of the incumbent.
So, when I asked my client during the practice session if she was familiar with managing project budgets, something she had not only not done, but also had an aversion to, her quick response was “Not only have I not managed project budgets, as I was not required to all these years, but I also hate doing it. Why, I have trouble balancing even my own checkbook.”
During my post-session debrief I told her that despite her other great answers, this particular answer would have scuttled this interview and that she would not get the job.
So, here is how I coached her to respond properly: There are two budgets for a project: One is the development budget that captures the total cost of prosecuting a project, including resource costs; and another is the budget for the Design to Cost (DTC). The latter drives the cost of the released product during its mature production phase. I can manage both, but since it entails keeping track of many cost elements it is best to delegate to someone familiar with financial analysis and I can supervise that person to ensure budget tracking. My focus must be keeping the overall project on track and I can be efficient doing it this way.
Remember, in this response she now uses the phrase “I can,” and not “I have.” There is a subtle difference in these expressions. The “can” answer reflects your attitude about doing such tasks, not your experience (“have”). Then I coached her on how to turn the tables on such questions by asking some critical questions about the original question itself. For example, to keep track of the resources’ time charges the company needs to put in place a time-card system, something that engineers and creative professionals avoid—even hate. Also, people spend their time well beyond the traditional workday (8:00-5:00) doing their jobs, and such extra efforts are not captured on a typical time card, creating a problem for those having to fill these out each week. Asking questions as, How are you going to deal with these challenges would have put the interviewer in a hot seat instead of the other way around.
My client knew all these challenges with budget management, but was not able to marshal the right answer on the spot during the practice session. Once coached, she was able to confidently provide the right responses during my second round of coaching.
So, here is the guidance about responding to questions that can land you in trouble with your spontaneous and forthright answers:
- Instead of answering a difficult or tricky question immediately, reflect on the response you intend to give and provide a response that indicates that you “can” do what needs to be done, instead of “have” done it. Deliver that response with confidence.
- As you are buying yourself some time to further think through the implications of your response and the original question, pose some thought-provoking questions to the interviewer that puts them on the defensive and results in showing your deeper knowledge of the question topic.
- Do not lose your presence of mind regardless of how difficult the question may seem. Most people (interviewers) cannot quickly differentiate between a “can” and a “have” answer.
- Once you show your confident response and ask the interviewer critical questions that you raised about the topic, you are having a mutually useful discussion on that topic, with you in the driver’s seat.
- Do not challenge the validity of the question: Why do you want to have project budgets; it complicates things? Instead, respond positively and voice your concerns as a part of that discussion.
Getting stumped during an interview is common, but the only way to stay on track is to NOT lose your composure and respond in a way that shows thoughtfulness and that elicits interviewer’s point of view.
Good luck!