Interview-expert.com | EasyAce Online Training

The heart of this question is finding out how well and how productively you work with other people. The person conducting the interview knows they could be the one working with you in the future and wants to know you will not be dead-weight, being someone that rides on the coattails of others and does not propose ideas or effort or even worse an Anchor, someone that creates arguments over trivial matters and works counterproductive to the goals of the team.

An ideal story will have the following characteristics:

The problem the team is taking on will be real and meaningful to the organization in which the team is apart. If you are a student, this could be a club or school project, for an executive it could be to divisions of a company working together to take advantage of a new opportunity. The importance here is that you are talking about a meaningful project that had significance for a definable reason.
Your response should contain conflict that occurs within the team with regards to the correct course of action. People from diverse backgrounds with different skill sets see things differently. However, in any conflict we always maintain professionalism, are empathetic towards the other team members point of view.
The pros and cons of each of the courses of action should be identified and developed by the team before the team goes to implement its solution. Often the root concern of a team member could be buried and must be uncovered. This comes from taking a deep dive into the problem and not just looking at surface issues.
The team should compromise, to determine the best course of action, but avoid making a camel, as the adage goes, a camel is a horse made by committee. The solution should be seen as the best course of action. But it is likely that some corrective action may need to be taken after implementation of the solution to “right the ship”, make sure to include these types of details in your story as these are critical details.
The team should ultimately have full buy in from its members as well as a successful outcome. This means that once the team “makes a decision” the brainstorming phase is over, and the team moves on to full implementation of the strategy it has agreed to. In cases where a team member has disagreements regarding the course of action they should still move forward with the plan to the best of their ability.
[Optional] In exceptional interview stories the solution is then leveraged into other areas of the firm's business process. This makes the team’s work even more powerful than just the problem it seeks to solve. It solved many more problems using its new process.

Key Points:

All members of the team should be treated with respect at all times. In reality you may have loathed one of your team members, an interview is not the time for venting about issues with past coworkers.
Do not tell a story where you “just went along with the crowd”, remember companies are not looking for “yes men and women” or blind compliance. They need people that express their ideas. If you are right fight for your point of view, if you are not able to win the support of the team for your position work to the best of your ability to make the solution chosen a success.
Having a team member play “Devils Advocate” to develop your “worst case scenario” is fine provided the other members of the team know that is the role the person is taking on, and that they are not trying to sabotage the team.

Good luck with developing your story! Remember to add 3-4 Traits found at the bottom of this page to your story. Also review the other sample questions at the bottom of the pages and practice converting this story to those other answers.

Following this six-point story flow explained in this video will help you to develop a wonderful answer to this surprisingly challenging interview question type.

How this works in Practice – Sample Working in a Team/Collaborative Environment

Growth

Accepts situations to improve personal knowledge, grows from mistakes as well

Compassionate

Treats others as equals and is cognizant as to the wishes and pains of others.

Anticipation

Sees issues as they approach and prepares by learning appropriate traits to handle them

Mentoring/Builder

Helps others by teaching needed skills to perform

I had two consecutive summer internships with the same Fortune 100 employer in their department of Credit and Risk Management. During the first summer internship between my sophomore and junior year, I learned a great deal about credit decisions and making collection calls on past due accounts. I was excited to learn these skills as I felt it would help my accounting career down the road. Most of the calls the department was having me make were with businesses with severe credit issues, they could not afford to pay as they were teetering on insolvency. There was little likelihood of any funds being recovered, but I diligently made my calls and tracked down invoices and would occasionally be rewarded with a payment. The next year between my junior and senior year in college things changed. Over the previous nine months while I was at school, the company had undertaken a cost reduction which reduced the entire white-collar workforce for the company by 10 percent. My department although critical was not saved from this headcount reduction. Everyone else in the company worked to absorb the increased workload. Additionally, any overtime to offset the workload reduction was seen as a failure on the manager’s part because the goal of the reduction was to force managers to come up with more efficient ways to perform the same workload. It was very sad to hear about the workplace reduction, although I understood the company needed to make a profit for its shareholders. The workload was being absorbed however with no overtime available for the non-managerial staff and I could tell my manager and coworkers were stressed. My manager was already was putting in a great deal of time. I asked how I could help, eager to learn over the summer, and he explained to me that he was way behind on updating the files for firms we had routinely been providing credit to, and at this point was only working the files that were for credit line increases. He said this was not ideal because one of these firms could be getting into financial trouble and the company could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would have lost had the issue been caught sooner. Furthermore, companies that are not performing well will usually not voluntarily send us their updated financial statements via our letter inquiry as the normal process, phone calls would have to be made as well. Often these calls have to be made to the Controller or CFO of the business. I asked my manager how he went about making decisions on credit. He gave me a loose framework, so we met as a team and as a group we developed a credit matrix for businesses we were extending credit. We combined elements of their financial statement, pay history with D&B, the credit monitoring agency, and firm’s years in business to make a quick way I could help the group with the files. What resulted from the matrix was a corresponding dollar amount in credit that would be appropriate for the firm. The firm had always had such high-level people evaluating credit based upon the dollar amounts involved that they had not developed a credit matrix. This made all of our time more efficient in our review of lower risk clients. When one failed the matrix, I would flag it and bring it to my manager. By the end of the summer, we were caught up on files. By this time, my manager had explained the system our team had developed to his boss and this information was disseminated through all three hundred people that worked in the Credit and Risk Management Department. This gave the managers the ability to have the staff help on the low-risk clients keeping the Risk Management System up to date. My manager thanked me at the end of the summer and explained that it was my eagerness to learn and a sense of urgency and willingness to try a new approach that helped lead to this innovation. His boss had estimated that our new matrix/team-based system had saved the company millions of dollars already.

How this works in Practice – Sample Working in a Team/Collaborative Environment

Mobilizer

Provides guidance and leadership and get the buy-in of others

Intuition

Perceives business changes and creates a plan to adapt to them

Win-Win

Associates with people to help cultivate, advance the organizations.

In my past position, I was placed on a team that was working on developing a new consulting product for our customers, and then presenting this solution to upper management. The product was a complex product, it was to match our clients together for procurements in joint ventures where we became the liaison which would formulate the joint venture agreement and bid for the contract. This product if implemented correctly had massive potential for our firm for several reasons. It would be a large revenue boost for our clients, and in the process, they would need to use additional services. Additionally, it would leverage our existing client base making us the clear choice for new customers as this was a service we felt our competitors were not sophisticated enough to offer. I initially thought this was a win- win for all people internally within our company. Everyone was all for the product and wanted to move forward seeing the huge benefits. We met with our account managers and analysts, and everyone was excited about the new product. Then the team began talking about the compensation ramifications for the stakeholders involved in our company, and it got bloody. The head of the account management team wanted the normal commission on the sale. We were not in a position to provide this full amount as the Operations Manager said, in reality, the Analysts were the team members with the most client contact and they should receive full commission. As the developer of the product, I had a team member who would be the one identifying the deals to be put together and have to sell the deals to the two customers, and this person would need to be paid a commission. So, we started with a very exciting product that we were creating and now were fighting over how our subordinates were going to be compensated. Something had to be done, or this product was going to fail. I gathered the team leaders and knew in advance that this negotiation was going to be heated as everyone wanted to be properly motivating their staff. In the end, we were able to compromise based upon the trust we had as we all knew everyone wanted what was best for the customers. We agreed and were each willing to go back to our teams and sell a lower commission rate provided we felt that it would provide sufficient motivation to our respective groups to keep them wanting to sell this product. Additionally since the product was a one of a kind in the marketplace, we increased the estimated sales price of the product to provide additional monies to provide to the staff. The result was we were able to get all members to buy into the new product launch, and we sold six joint ventures in the first month, which was double top management’s expectations. This product remains lucrative for our firm to this day.

This Course has 14 sections each contain the following:
Review Question and Similar Questions	1-2 Min
Core Concept / Video	5 Min Read / 5 Min View
Sample Interview Stories	10 Min Read
Review Tips	1-3 Min
Write Story / Use Story Builder / Add Traits	20 Min

How Interview Bootcamp Works

Interview Question:

Answer these similar interview questions by slightly modifying the story you wrote. Now you can answer 1 of the 14 possible types of questions you can be asked in an interview.

(you use the same answer for these team questions as well)

How do you behave on a team?

Provide me with an example when you were on a team and what was the outcome?

Give me an example of a challenging team you were on?

Tell me about a time that you had a particularly difficult internal business customer (not financial issue)?

Tell me about a direct report/team member whom you found difficult to coach. Describe a specific situation. How did you handle it? What were the results?

Think of a time when you had a major role in developing a team that became very successful. Tell me one or two things you did that contributed to the team’s success?

Tips

Traits Needed in Story

Story Self Assessment Meter

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14 interview questions and answers

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Course Content:

This Course has 14 sections each contain the following: