Answering the job interview question: “Tell me about a time where you had to deal with conflict on the job.”

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Some of the most rewarding and frustrating experiences can come from work relationships. Because everyone is different and sees things through different lenses, you will encounter disagreements from your manager, coworker, and or customers at various times of your career. Everyone has these experiences so coming up with stories is the easy part. The hard part is sharing a story in a way to impress your interviewer and get you a job. Let’s show you how.

Variations of this question

“Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss.” · “Share a time when you had conflict at work.” · “How do you work with difficult people?” · “Tell of a time you had to serve a difficult customer.”

What the hiring manager is looking for

A hiring manager wants to hire someone who can do their job effectively, with minimal managerial involvement. Because they understand that most work gets done through collaboration, they are trying to understand how you will cooperate with people who have different perspectives, personalities and work styles.

What your goal should be

Your goal is to reassure the hiring manager you can work with anyone in a professional manner and without causing problems. You need to tell a story that shows you have successfully resolved a conflict with a coworker or customer. Ideally, this story will show the hiring manager you have a process or set of principles you use to address conflict.

Preparing for this question

Start by thinking of and listing various possible experiences where you have successfully dealt with conflict. These stories should be work-related and align well with the position you are applying for.

Once you have a few stories, pick out positive principles or processes that you use to resolve conflict. Showing the hiring manager that you have a framework helps reassure them you truly are effective at conflict resolution. Then, pick the story that best exemplifies the framework you came up with.

Answer Structure

Your answer should be no longer than 3 minutes and should contain the following elements:

1. Start by stating your framework, process, or principles you use when encountering conflict in a work setting. This should take 10 seconds.
   
   Example: “Whenever I encounter conflict at work, the first thing I do is ask as many questions as I can to truly understand my co-worker’s point of view. Then I steer the conversation to problem-solving instead of pointing fingers.”
2. Then, tell the story using the S-T-A-R interview response method, by explaining the Situation, Task, Action and Result of your story. This step should take no longer than 2 minutes.
   
   Example:
   Situation- “For example, a few months ago I noticed that the newly hired content writer I work with was taking much longer to write emails than our last content writer.” (~15 seconds)
   Task- “She quickly became a bottleneck and I felt I needed to help her improve her process so we could get more of our work done.” (~15 seconds)
   Action- “I approached the situation by telling her the facts — we were behind in our work and that others were doing the same amount of work in half the time. And then I asked her if she could help me understand her process. After asking lots of questions, I realized that because she wanted to do a great job she was doing a lot of research on our customers. The problem was that the research had already been done by me and others on my team. It turns out, I was not doing a good enough job explaining the context of the situation and giving her the research she needed to write the appropriate content. We discussed how I could do the data transfer better and we came up with a great process.” (~60–90 seconds)
   Result- “Since then we have been steadily improving our process. We have become so efficient that we are ahead of our work and our emails are testing incredibly well. What’s best is that the content department has learned of what we are doing and have implemented our process department-wide!” (~30 seconds)

Extra tips

• Do not say you never experience conflict because it will communicate that you don’t have the courage to stand up for what you believe in.
• Do not say you always experience conflict because it implies that you are the instigator of the conflict.
• Do not blame others for conflict. Most of the time conflict comes from both or all parties.
• If you don’t have enough work experience, you should share a conflict that could easily be associated with work, such as school projects, extra-curricular initiatives or side projects.
• Check out our related articles: Using the S-T-A-R Interview Response Method and Answering the job interview question: “Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss.”

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