Interviewing for new roles, whether internally or externally, can be an enlightening experience or a daunting, intimidating one, and anything in between. Many professionals have shared that they often dread the interview process, which can lead them to remain far too long in their current positions, even when these roles no longer offer career or leadership growth opportunities.
The best way to overcome interview anxiety is through thorough preparation. Having well-formulated answers to key questions before the interview can boost your confidence and help you present yourself at your highest and best.
One frequently asked question that many candidates struggle with—and is important to prepare for—is: “How do you prioritize your work?”
Understanding The Question
When interviewers ask “How do you prioritize your work?” they want to understand your ability to manage multiple tasks efficiently, handle stress and the unexpected, and ensure critical projects are completed on time. This question and the answers you provide help the hiring manager evaluate your organizational skills, time management abilities, decision-making processes, and communication approach, as well as your capacity to anticipate and mitigate potential challenges.
Key Themes To Include In Your Answer
There are several key areas of focus to address when you answer this question. They include:
Task Assessment and Categorization
- Urgency vs. Importance: Explain how you differentiate between urgent tasks (those with immediate and critical deadlines) vs. important tasks (those that contribute to longer-term goals). The Eisenhower Matrix can be a useful reference here.
- Impact Evaluation: Describe how you assess the potential impact of your tasks—on your projects, team, and organization—to determine their priority.
Planning and Scheduling
- Daily and Weekly Planning: Discuss your process for setting daily and weekly goals, using to-do lists, planners, or project management tools.
- Time Blocking: Mention if you use techniques like time blocking to allocate specific periods for focused work on high-priority tasks.
Tools and Techniques- Project Management Software: Talk about any tools you use to track tasks and deadlines, such as Trello, Asana, or MicrosoftMicrosoft 0.0% Planner.
- Prioritization Frameworks: Reference any frameworks you use, such as the ABCDE method or the MoSCoW method (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have).
Communication and Collaboration
- Stakeholder Engagement: Explain how you communicate with stakeholders to understand their needs and adjust priorities accordingly.
- Team Coordination: Highlight how you collaborate with team members to align on priorities and share the workload effectively.
Flexibility and Adaptability
- Re-Evaluating Priorities: Describe how you regularly reassess and adjust your priorities in response to new information or changing circumstances.
- Handling Interruptions: Share your strategies for managing interruptions and staying focused on high-priority tasks.
Stress Management
- Coping Strategies: Discuss how you handle stress on the job and the strategies you’ve developed to manage stressful times productively.
Examples and Results
- Real-Life Scenarios: Provide examples from past roles and experiences where your prioritization skills led to successful outcomes.
- Measurable Impact: Offer key data and metrics that quantify the impact of your prioritization decisions (e.g., meeting critical deadlines, improving efficiency, achieving key milestones).
Sample Answers
There are numerous ways to answer the question, and the best ways will draw on what you’ve already discussed with the hiring manager, about how their work culture operates, how this open role fits in with other departments and teams, as well as the specific demands and goals of the job you’re going for.
Below are several examples of potential answers to this question:
Example 1
“I begin my week by setting clear objectives and breaking them down into daily to-do lists. I use project management software like Asana to keep track of all my tasks and deadlines. This helps me stay organized and allows me to quickly adjust my priorities – and share those adjustments with others—if something unexpected comes up.”
Example 2
“Communication is crucial in my prioritization process. I regularly check in with my manager and team to discuss their needs and update them on my progress. This ensures my priorities align with the broader goals of the project and the organization. In my previous role, I managed multiple important product launches simultaneously. By prioritizing tasks based on their impact and deadlines, and what leadership deemed most important, I delivered all projects on time and improved our team’s productivity by 20%.”
Variations Of The Question
Overall, when hiring managers inquire about your work prioritization process, they are looking to understand how you think, analyze challenges, determine what’s most important, and handle your workload effectively.
Some common variations of this question include:
- “When you have too much on your plate to complete all the projects in the necessary timeframe, how do you decide what to tackle first?”
- “What specifically goes into your thought process when determining how to prioritize various tasks?”
- “What steps do you take when a top-priority project is looking like it won’t be completed by the deadline? How do you handle that?
- How do you communicate the news that a project has slipped and might miss the deadline?”
In the end, formulating strong, compelling answers to the question, “How do you prioritize your work?” helps you demonstrate concretely your organizational skills, decision-making processes, leadership vision and your ability to manage stress and the inevitable disruptions and changes that regularly occur in today’s workplaces.
By preparing thoughtful responses that showcase your strategies and real-life examples, you can provide a comprehensive answer that reflects both you at your best and most authentic, while also highlighting your potential fit for the role and the company’s work culture.
Kathy Caprino is a career and leadership coach, author of The Most Powerful You, and trainer helping professionals build their most rewarding careers.
