Answering the job interview question: “Tell me about your best team experience — and your role in it.”

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Most of the work that gets done at work or any organization happens through teamwork. This is because the diversity of perspective and skills allows for more effective solutions. Therefore, it is crucial for employees to know how to work well with others. But even if you are a great team player, remember you must also be great at explaining how good of a team player you really are. Let’s show you how to do this well.

Variations of this question

“Tell me about a great team experience you’ve had in your career.” · “Tell me about a team project you have worked on.” · “Share a time when you led a team to success.” · “What role do you normally play in team situations?”

What the hiring manager is looking for

The hiring manager asks the teamwork question to understand how well you work with other people. Additionally, they want to get a sense of how proactive you are and whether you are the type of person that will play their part well and even lead a team to success.

What your goal should be

Your goal is to share a story that convinces the hiring manager that you not only enjoy but can also work effectively with a group of people to solve big problems. Instead of telling everything you do as a group, make sure that you also include a clear impact that you made as an active member of the group.

Preparing for this question

Start by reading the job description and listing out any job responsibilities that relate to teamwork. Next, think of experiences where you have worked as part of a team to solve a challenging problem. Pick a story that most closely aligns to the responsibilities you found in the job description and where you succeeded in solving the problem. Ideally, you would want to pick a story where you had a leadership role or at least a significant impact in getting the team to succeed.

Answer Structure

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

1. Start by stating the team you are in, what it was responsible for, and what your role was in it. This should take 10 seconds.
   
   Example: “Last year, I was asked to participate in a group managing our biggest learning and development conference of the year. I was in charge of helping each of our speakers design their presentations.”
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- “Every year, we invite our entire sales team for a big learning and development conference. This means 300+ salespeople come from all over the US to learn how to do their job better.” (~15 seconds)
   Task- “As a team, we had to find a dozen speakers that would help our salespeople improve their skills so they could achieve all their sales goals. And once we found them, I was responsible for helping them to tell their story in a visual way so the audience could learn more efficiently.” (~15 seconds)
   Action- “We started out by brainstorming possible professionals who would be able to speak. One of the biggest contributions I made was suggesting that we start with understanding the deficiencies of the sales department. The team agreed and we worked together to survey our salesforce and identify weaknesses. With our survey results, we were also able to identify experts in the specific fields we were wanting to improve. We invited a few internal experts and using our professional network, we were able to get external experts as well. I then worked with each speaker to understand what it was they were going to present and crafted infographics and slides for each presenter. I made sure to use my team to help me think of the best way to visualize principles and stories the presenters wanted to share and we delivered a solid slide deck.” (~60–90 seconds)
   Result- “It was so gratifying to see our conference! It turned out to be the highest rated conference the company has ever had. People shared so many positive comments about our conference that the executive team publicly recognized us after the conference and asked us to plan next year’s conference as well. It also turns out that our company exceeded our sales goals by 10%!” (~30 seconds)

Extra tips

• Balance the team’s and your personal contributions. The key is to have both, not one more than the other.
• If you don’t have a work team experience, consider group projects for class projects, school clubs, or volunteer organizations.
• Do not share negative things about your team! Even if you ended up doing all of the work, the last thing you want to say is that the rest of your team were slackers. Being a good team member is finding ways to get everyone engaged and working toward a common cause.
• Check out our related articles: Answering the job interview question: “Tell me about a time where you had to deal with conflict on the job.” and Using the S-T-A-R Interview Response Method.

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