Interview question.... (1 Viewer)

[NewShoes]

Hey all,

I have an interview coming up and suspect that one of the questions will be relating to managing conflicting deadlines. (i.e. You have 2 pieces of work that are due at the same time and are of equal importance).

Just wondering how you guys and gals would answer this?

Thanks
-NS

 

[ChrisO]

I think a question like that would be asked in order to determine if you are prepared to delegate at least one of the jobs to someone else.

In an interview I was once asked: -
Would you mind if I asked how much you eared in your last job?
No.
.
.
. long pause
.
.
Well, how much did you earn in your last job?
Do you mind if I don’t tell you?

The interviewer had no respect for my privacy or the privacy of my last employer.
Nor did he seem to realise that if I considered it fair game to answer his question I might also think it fair game to tell someone else how much they were paying.

I didn’t get the job, the interviewer failed the interview.


Added:
On another occasion I was asked if I could work independently, while at the same time there was a sign on the wall saying "There's no I in TEAM".

It makes one wonder how they got their job.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I always defined conflict resolution by refusing to resolve. My answer would be to tell my boss I have a conflict, and since I don't set my own schedule would he mind telling me whose project is less likely to get me fired if I'm late with it. Bosses are there to resolve conflicts. If the boss doesn't have the answer, why is he the boss?

But then, I'm a confrontational guy.

 

[vbaInet]

In this circumstance interviewers may like to hear that you would be willing to put in the extra time and effort to ensure that both deadlines are met even if it meant working over your paid hours. Keeping your clients happy is of grave importance.

 

[Vassago]

Really, all of these canned interview questions are stupid. Everyone knows the canned answers! If I was in HR, I would completely blow their mind with questions seemingly unrelated to the job, but that would give me an idea of their personality. I want to see how the person responds to something new, not old and repeated.

I remember when I was looking for a job years back and every interview I had had the same old questions. I knew exactly what to say and was natural at it after a few interviews. It came out smooth and I could even act like it wasn't memorized.

 

[dfenton]

You might want to study Allen Browne's solution to the problem:

http://allenbrowne.com/appevent.html

You might try to come up with a list of pros/cons for his approach (though I don't really know any other), since you'd basically be cribbing someone else's answer otherwise.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

dfenton, Allen's approach is nice, but an interviewer doesn't want to see how you know have you a scheduling problem. He wants to see you handle your OWN scheduling problem.

My answer is simple:

If I'm the boss I delegate one of the conflicts to one person and the other conflicted event to another person.

If I'm not the boss then I ask the boss which one is more likely to get me fired if it is late.

If they ask why I didn't suggest that I would do overtime, I would point out that we hadn't talked about company rules on overtime yet. Believe it or not, in my job with the government as a contractor, I am not allowed to work overtime without explicit approval for every separate event!

Vassago, I used to love to conduct fishing expeditions. I would tell folks I was going on one, then ask them what they knew about finite state automata or Monte Carlo methods or simplex optimization. Not because I expected them to know anything but I wanted to find someone who knew just enough to get in trouble with it. The ones who HAD to have an answer were suspect. The ones who would admit that they didn't know about some particular topic were honest. Those, I hired. Because kids don't understand that it isn't what you learned in college that counts. Your bosses will teach you the particulars of your job anyway. It is attitude and the ability to adapt that gets you hired.

 

[Vassago]

dfenton, Allen's approach is nice, but an interviewer doesn't want to see how you know have you a scheduling problem. He wants to see you handle your OWN scheduling problem.

My answer is simple:

If I'm the boss I delegate one of the conflicts to one person and the other conflicted event to another person.

If I'm not the boss then I ask the boss which one is more likely to get me fired if it is late.

If they ask why I didn't suggest that I would do overtime, I would point out that we hadn't talked about company rules on overtime yet. Believe it or not, in my job with the government as a contractor, I am not allowed to work overtime without explicit approval for every separate event!

Vassago, I used to love to conduct fishing expeditions. I would tell folks I was going on one, then ask them what they knew about finite state automata or Monte Carlo methods or simplex optimization. Not because I expected them to know anything but I wanted to find someone who knew just enough to get in trouble with it. The ones who HAD to have an answer were suspect. The ones who would admit that they didn't know about some particular topic were honest. Those, I hired. Because kids don't understand that it isn't what you learned in college that counts. Your bosses will teach you the particulars of your job anyway. It is attitude and the ability to adapt that gets you hired.

These are very valid points. I do understand it's not what you learned in college that counts. That is why I never went and still got where I am today.

 

[Lightwave]

Must admit I don't think its a particularly good question.

Would be a bit disappointed if they asked me it as its very difficult to come out with anything particularly meaningful.

I think ChrisO and The Doc Man's responses are quite rational for a confident person.

ie a question beneath contempt...

But... its the kind of question that the HR person panelist comes out with and quite often the technical lads will grown as much as you at the sheer waste of space of the conversation.

 

[Len Boorman]

Think that avoidance of a conflict is the first point to resolve.

When tasked with two projects due same day I would first establish if I hada delivery problem. If there was a conflict then the time to resolve is at task designation time not when they are nearly due for completion.

Ways to resolve
Additional resource
Additional time
Reschedule one project

Most of these questions are really just to find out if you can think for yourself.

Len B

 

[The_Doc_Man]

So true, Len. Thinking for one's self is a valuable attribute that not all kids learn right away. (Witness the number of questions we get that are obviously homework from some access class or another.)

Heck, even I don't always think first and ask write code later. My recent question in the Forms section is such an example. I've corrected myself on that one.

 

[Len Boorman]

Hey Doc Man
I should not worry too much about getting thinking and code writing in the right order. Who says there is a sequence. So it might be the "usual" or "preferred" process but when you are creating something that has not been done before then sometimes you need a few pure development actions first to find out "what happens" before you can apply the "further thinking" part of the process. Grampa outranks MVP by a mile.

Back to thread.

I heard it say that if you do not plan to succed (on a project) then you are planning to fail. Maybe a bit harsh but a fair bit of truth also. If you have two tasks due on the same day and did not know about that situation until the muck hits the fan then you have failed., why ? because you did not plan.

When I was working it was not unusual to have 3 database projects in some stage of development at the same time. one in thinking, one in hard development and one at training/launch. Along with these would be the normal support on released applications and naturally the "it would be nice if" little tweaks that people should always be asking for.

So the question of what would you do when two tasks are due on the same day demonstrates that whowver is asking the question does not undersrtanf planning, does not plan andis therefore a failure.

Never actually told an interviewer that they were a failure but it is an interesting scenario.

Maybe somebody will offer me a job and I can try it out at the interview.

Len B

 

[chergh]

This sort of question annoys me as it is so unrealistic what I would like to say to the interviewer would be "I'd toss a coin".

 

[rainman89]

This sort of question annoys me as it is so unrealistic what I would like to say to the interviewer would be "I'd toss a coin".

yeah or say.. Which one would you want done first?