Sunday 14 December 2014

When was the last time you lost your temper at work?

Losing temper may reflect your working style. Be cauntious while answering such questions. Such questions may have following intentions.


Possible Intention:

  • To know if you get off balanced frequently.
  • To know if you can handle a situation calmly. If you cannot keep yourself cool in a certain situation then how you look at it after it is over.
  • To know if you use such opportunity to play a blame game and say your anger was due to someone else's mistake.

Insights:

  • Make sure that you are not playing a blame game.
  • Try to give a safer response which would not hurt anybody.
  • You can always blame yourself in a way and elaborate what you learned from incident.
  • Good opportunity for you to say you get annoyed and angry on your own performance or way of handling the situation. This shows you strive for continuous performance.
  • State the circumstances do not dictate or force emotions. This will demonstrate high Emotional Quotient.(EQ).

Example Answer:

I was reviewing my work on test cases to be sent and before saving the computer had some problem. I got frustrated as the deadline was near. But now I have learned to keep my cool handle such situations.

Anti Pattern:

  • Do not blame other people like team mates, managers or clients.
  • Make sure that while describing the incident you do not get too much exited and aggressive. You may unknowingly say something which will call for trouble in the later part of interview.
  • Do not give a message that whole world is against me and I have to fight and get angry to set things right. It would never be the case that due to your anger you achieved something right.

Interviewer's Interpretation

  • If you blame other people it indicates that you are not a good team player.
  • If you get angry with yourself but learn something from the incident then it is a good virtue.
With anger and frustration nothing can be accomplished. You need to keep your cool.

No comments:

Post a Comment