Tell Us About a Time When You Were Up Against a Tight Deadline. How Did You Handle It?

This is the perfect time to show that you’re solutions-focused and don’t mind stepping up to the plate when duty calls. Remember the STAR method again for this behavioral question. Choosing which story to tell can be difficult, so before the interview you’ll want to prepare a story about a time you stepped up and successfully navigated the situation by demonstrating your leadership and time management skills.

For example:

“I was getting through a quarter filing and someone on my team fell sick halfway through, so we were down one person. We had to make it work with our timeline since there was no flexibility with it. I was tasked with getting our team through the filing period and keeping team motivation and engagement high while we were short-staffed.

“I rearranged our work to spread it out evenly and based on everyone’s expertise. I held weekly team meetings—twice a week closer to the deadline—to discuss any areas where we were struggling, lagging behind, or running into issues and to support each other and brainstorm solutions. I also set up a shared calendar with reminders for important milestones to help everyone stay on task.

“This resulted in us building strong communication even after the filing was successfully completed on time. We motivated and supported one another through the process and each person felt valued as a member of the team. This actually worked out so will that I plan to use this approach with my teams going forward to ensure future projects run smoothly.”