That’s a good question. I may ask it in the future. I would not hire someone who said, “I always do what my manager asks.” I always tell my people to do what’s right, not what they are told. Obviously, they’ll have some ‘splainin’ to do, but I’m looking for people who will take the initiative and ask for forgiveness, not for permission.
I don’t agree with the ‘looking for yesmen’ interpretation at all. In my experience, jobs where they want yesmen (and those jobs abound) you would never hear a question like this in an interview. Jobs that basically require lower level people to do exactly what they are told are common, and are typically jobs in which the manager is much higher paid and higher credentialed. (Think bank manager–bank teller, or factory foreman–factory worker type relationships.) Those jobs often have “weed out tests” you have to take to make sure you’re the type who knows how to do what is told quickly and consistently.
A job in a business, engineering or etc at a more white collar level and you don’t want drones. You don’t want rebels either, but there is a big difference between someone who rebels against the core corporate goals and culture and sends emails/memos above his superior to try to quixotically affect organizational changes (this is someone almost no company wants in a lower level white collar position) and someone who becomes an important part of a team contributing ideas and solutions.
Some of the answers in this thread are so off it’s amazing. To provide some context, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people and been trained for behavioral interviewing (which is the category that question falls into).
So: some things to be aware of here.
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This question is intended to find out how the interviewee handles conflict, or even more importantly if he/she has even thought of conflict as something you have to “handle” as opposed to just being reactionary. There are variations on manager (co-worker, team member), but that’s secondary to the intent of the question. There are lots of good answers to this.
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To someone’s point above, all behavioral questions are an open opportunity for you to say something stupid. I’ll never forget years ago we asked someone a “business thinking” question about what you’d do if you owned a coffee shop and a Starbucks opened down the street, and his response was to guffaw and say “I’d plant a bomb.” [he didn’t provide an actual answer after that] Which is somewhat funny in a lunch table conversation, but not as helpful in an interview. You also get (and someone also referred to this above) people who bitch about their co-workers or current employers, and guess what? They’re not getting hired.
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I’ve worked with interviewers who were given lists of behavioral questions to ask without having been taught what the intent is. “Here, ask these questions, they’re behavioral!” Those people are the most dangerous because who knows what the fuck they’re looking for.
Anyway, here’s a sample answer: “I didn’t agree with my boss Twickster’s moderation of a thread, and I talked to her about it. In the end I did understand her point about shutting down the thread and agreed with her, but she also partially agreed with me and didn’t follow through on the banning of moejoe.” Or something like that.
Fascinating. In one particular interview I did get the sense from other questions that there was quite a bit of drama on the team. It seemed like they all hated their jobs and I’m happy to not be working there.
Unless and except you have a boss who doesn’t think he wants yes men, who prides himself on not wanting yes men, but who really, deep down inside, prefers someone who will always agree with him. But, to be fair, that guy wants you to answer the question as if you’d push back against a stupid order, because he’s confident that he, himself, would never give one.
I hate these types of questions. Do we all walk around with a database in our heads of this kind of stuff?
Tell me about a time when you were leading a team and had to convince them your strategy was correct?
Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with another coworker and how you handled it?
Tell me about a time when you had to talk to your manager about the poor performance of another employee?
I can’t stand this shit. It assumes that you have readily available anecdotes to pull from, and if you don’t then obviously you’re trying to cover-up or lie about your past. Most of us just go to fucking work and do our jobs; it’s not “As the World Turns” or anything. Jesus Christ.
I actually have asked a similar question in interviews. I definitely wasn’t looking for the answer “I just agree with everything my boss says” or similar, even though to some degree I was looking for yes-men – this was a call center job, and mostly we just needed compliant buns in the seats. I didn’t mind someone who had fresh ideas too, but it wasn’t a primary consideration, mostly we were looking for people who were low drama and reliable.
The reason you ask is because every normal human being disagrees with their boss sooner or later and I want to see how you handle those situations. You’d be surprised how many seemingly great candidates take this opportunity to demonstrate that they are the King/Queen of Being Right About Everything, in order to make themselves seem smart. You see, the company was failing, but I knew everything that needed to be fixed! I’d tell them but they just wouldn’t ever listen. (Now realistically, there are some companies that are indeed run poorly, but an emotionally mature person tends not to say so in a job interview!)
People who think – and moreso, who tell you – that they are the smartest people in the room are a pain in the ass in an entry level position, and it tends to be a symptom of being one of the employees who just won’t let things go, chronically complain and disrupt staff meetings with the same suggestions, and who generally drag their heels over changes. Regardless of how smart you are, and even regardless of how right you may be, sometimes the answer is just going to be “this is a company wide decision and I can’t change it”, or “I understand your objection but we’re going to proceed anyway”. At that point, you need to get over it; continuing to argue and press is disruptive. Your job, at the end of the day, is to follow the client’s instructions and answer the calls the way you want them to – whether you agree with that direction or not. It’s the client’s customers who are calling, we do what we are told. I need to trust that you’ll do that even if I’m not watching.
The right answer is more or less that they brought up the issue professionally, defended it factually rather than emotionally, and if they were overruled – they let it go. Maybe they presented it again at a future, appropriate time if the original strategy failed, maybe the new strategy worked and they learned something about it, maybe they found a different way of improving the problems with the new process once they committed to it and worked something else out, there are lots of good outcomes. The primary thing is that they didn’t get so invested in the decision as to sabotage it or become embittered.
I asked the question because hey, I knew our company made bad decisions sometimes, and so did our clients, and it happened pretty often that even very good suggestions were turned down. We’d often be asked to do things that any common sense review should have ruled out in ten seconds. Sometimes we couldn’t even really explain why, or might not know ourselves, and just deliver a no. It’s fine for you to bring up those problems, but in the end it’s pretty likely we’re going to have to do it anyway, and I want you to be able to nut up like an adult and understand that.
I’ll also add that a tertiary reason for the question is just gauging critical thinking skills and overall intelligence. While I did want people who wouldn’t kick up a huge fuss, I also didn’t want anyone who needed to be led around by the nose constantly – sometimes the rules are fuzzy or the instructions vague, and it’s often better for you to try to figure it out and occasionally fail than to run over to my desk every 5 minutes to follow my instructions. Being able to think about a process or a business decision critically shows me that you actually do a little bit of independent thinking, and that’s good.
It’s also a good way to root out the people who were a little selfish and immature – they would usually answer something like “They took away our microwave and it was totally unfair!” rather than something actually, you know, business related. Having a little perspective goes a long way.
Those are all classics, but if you can’t answer these I don’t assume you’re lying - I assume you haven’t given much thought to some softball questions that are highly likely to come up in the interview.
I hate asking them, by the way, but they seem to work.
I agree that these types of questions are trite and ridiculous, but necessary. Kind of like asking a candidate’s name, previous employment history, education, etc. It’s boring and predictable, but needs to be done.
The really good/fun questions are the ones that REALLY make you say WTF like, “How many people would you estimate work in the Empire State Building on an average work day?”
Most managers are people, too, and what they are looking for more than anything is someone who will:
1 - Do the job competently
2 - Not be a giant pain in the ass about it
And, in the end, if I had to pick only one, it would probably be the second, because it’s easier to train someone to do the job than to try to fix a personality issue.
Open ended questions about how you handle situations lets me get you talking. Sure, if you’re clever, you can lie even if you are a colossal dick, but you would be surprised how many people not only are real pains in the ass but have legitimately no idea that they are. They think of themselves as the perfect employee, and it’s everyone else who’s stupid and lazy. They honestly don’t realize that they come across as smug and dismissive, because of course they’re so smart/educated/experienced/better than everyone else.
Unless your job involves zero interactions with co-workers or managers, your personality and professionalism matters to me. I want someone who is going to be a “fit” with the job and with our existing staff. You may do a great job on your TPS reports but I also want to make sure you’re not going to throw tantrums or make a co-worker cry. It’s amazing how many grown men and women can be enormous pains, and it’s hard to fire someone who does measurable work well but also runs off other staff by being douchey all the time.
I mean, really, I know it’s a job, but I spend more time with my co-workers than pretty much anyone else. I’d just as soon have our interactions go smoothly because we’re nice, mellow people rather than deal with drama. I’ve dealt with excruciating co-workers and I’d rather make less money than deal with that shit.
They’re bullshit questions. They’re bullshit questions (and I’m going to sound sexist here) thought up by female HR consultants. Females worry about this kind of shit at work, and men don’t.
My wife comes home all the fucking time complaining about work relationships; I never have once. I keep telling her “They’re paying you to do this! They give you money to put up with this! It’s not like you’re doing it for free or anything!”
Honestly, I remember one meeting I walked out of about 20 years ago because I was being attacked about something that wasn’t even on the meeting agenda. Other than that I have no stories to tell to hiring managers. I make up some shitty bullshit story on the fly when asked these types of questions, because, honestly, in 27 years of working I don’t have any mudslinging stories to tell. I go to work and do my job. I’m rational. If someone else has a more rational approach to an idea I’ll buy into it. I like to think the flip side is true too.
Uh, yeah, that’s pretty sexist. And frankly untrue. It might be true for you, but I’ve worked with a lot of men and they’re a pretty mixed bag overall.
Of the people I can think of off the top of my head for categorization as being disruptive when it comes to changes they don’t agree with, it’s probably 2 men for every one woman. Guys certainly do get emotionally invested with work stuff sometimes – you may not, but I see it all the time. And I certainly have had no shortage of grousing from men about personal issues and not liking other employees for reasons unrelated to their work.
Whether or not you go home and bitch to your spouse is really immaterial to me, but if you are going to mutter and grumble for weeks because you don’t like the new coffee maker (and yes, I have seen a grown man do this) or go to my manager because you didn’t like being told in a meeting that we had to move on to a different topic after you groused about the same policy decision you disagreed with from 3 months ago, again, for 15 minutes (another man), then it becomes my problem.
It’s business. Having a relationship is nice and all, but not being a pain in the ass is ultimately a matter of business because I only have so much time in the day and I don’t need to spend it all dealing with unpleasant employees – and, in particular, the havoc they create in their wake.
Strongly disagree (won’t even touch the stuff about genders). I see this kind of problem every day at work, and knowing how people approach conflict is critical in my world. Perhaps it isn’t important in your line of work but in mine, questions like this help me understand how people choose to deal with their jobs.
Well, like I said, in 27 years of experience, men have never been the cause of personal issues at work. It’s always the females. Always.
Listen, I’m only speaking from experience, and not purposely trying to pick sides. It’s just the way it’s always been for me. Your experience is obviously different. I don’t think I should apologize for my personal experiences.
Putting up with bullshit is part of having a job. One man’s bullshit is important to somebody else, and if that somebody is above you on the totem pole you suck it up and deal with it. You should take your own advice: “They’re paying you to do this! They give you money to put up with this! It’s not like you’re doing it for free or anything!”
An interview is the same, except you’re trying to convince them to pay you in the future. Questions like this are common enough that you should have an answer for them, and during the interview isn’t the time to come up with it. If you go in unprepared, it’s nobody’s fault but your own - certainly not the women in HR.
I am and have been prepared. I hate the questions and they’re shitty questions.
At two separate interviews for positions at completely unrelated companies, my friend was asked, “If you were part of a salad, what part would you be?”
Is that a new standard question for interviews?
See. Shitty questions. I hate all this new HR wave bullshit. Bring me in and talk to me about the fucking job. If you can’t get a grip on what kind of person I am without asking bullshit touchy-feely questions then you’re an idiot. Don’t assume I’m one because I can’t tell you what kind of tree I’d like to be.
I think the best answer is “I’d raise the issues I was having with the manager and then carry out his directions whichever way he decided.”