Are Right a Lot

The mistake/failure questions

• Tell me about a time you made a mistake.

• Tell me about a time when you had an error in judgement.

• Tell me about a time when you made a bad decision.

• Tell me about a time when you regret your decision.

Typical Questions (2nd Set)

The interpersonal conflict questions

• Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague. What is the process you used to work it out?

• Tell me about a time when you had to incorporate the perspectives of different users into a project/product. 

• Tell me about a situation where your personal work style may have hindered your chances of success.

• Tell me about a time where you felt you had not communicated well or your communications were poorly received.

• Tell me about a time where someone convinced you to reverse your opinion or decision.

• Tell me about a time when you needed to adapt to a colleague's work style to finish a project.

• Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a teammate about how a project was going. 

• Tell me about a time when a better decision was reached because of different viewpoints.

• Tell me about a conflict you successfully resolved at work?

• Describe a situation where you thought you were right, but your peers or supervisor didn’t agree with you. How did you convince them you were right? How did you react? What was the outcome?

• Tell me about a time that you strongly disagreed with your manager on something you deemed to be very important to the business. What was it about and how did you handle it?

• Tell me about a time where someone openly challenged you. How did you handle this feedback?

• Give me an example of when you took an unpopular stance in a meeting with peers and your leader and you were the outlier. What was it, why did you feel strongly about it, and what did you do?

• When do you decide to go along with the group decision even if you disagree? Give me an example of a time you chose to acquiesce to the group even when you disagreed. Would you make the same decision now?

Typical Questions (3rd Set)

The judgement or data questions

• Given the arbitrary set of data, how do you access your confidence in the accuracy and usefulness of it?

  • How do you label the data?

• How would you determine what types of data to collect or keep and which to discard?

• Tell me a time when data was your ally and you were able to take decisions?

• Tell me a time when data was not your ally and what did you do?

• Give me an example of making an important decision in the absence of good data. What was the situation and how did you arrive at your decision? Did the decision turn out to be the correct one?

• Tell me about a decision for which data and analysis weren’t enough to provide the right course and you had to rely on your judgment and instincts. Give me two to three examples.

• Tell me about a time you made a difficult decision and how you knew it was the right solution (how you evaluated the options, if you received input, what data you reviewed, etc.)

• Give me an example of when you had to make an important decision in the absence of good data because there just wasn’t any. What was the situation and how did you arrive at your decision? Did the decision turn out to be the correct one? Why or why not?

• Tell me about a time you had to fix something but had no data or direction.

• Tell me about a time when you were faced with a challenge where the best way forward or strategy to adopt was not “clear cut” (i.e., there were a number of possible solutions). How did you decide the best way forward?

Interviewers Motive

• Most of these are behavioral questions. 

• Interviewers are looking for solid examples.