Did you have to think on your feet in order to deal with a situation?
Job interviews are stressful! You only get one chance to impress, so you need a great answer for this. And that means you need to prepare for it.
Preparing for the STAR interview question “tell me about a time when you had to think on your feet in order to deal with a situation." just means developing a way of telling the story that leads naturally through the STAR questions.
There are lots of ways to answer the STAR interview question,“Tell me about a time when you had to think on your feet in order to deal with a situation.” Here are some samples for answering this question.
The project was due in a week and we hadn't made any progress at all.
S - I was working in a team of three people and we had to deliver a project by the end of the month. The project was due in a week and we hadn't made any progress at all.
T - My task was to lead the team and make sure that we were on track with our goals and deliverables for the project.
A - I spoke with each member of my team individually and explained why this was important for our careers. They were all very motivated once they understood how much potential this project had, so it wasn't hard to get them on board with me. We then got together as a group and came up with ideas for how we could get things done faster than originally planned. We decided on an approach that would allow us to work on multiple parts of the project simultaneously instead of one at a time as we originally planned.
R - We finished 6 hours ahead of schedule! The client loved everything we delivered and gave us positive feedback about how well it worked out on their end too!
We had a new client who would constantly call in and request changes to their website
S - We had a new client who would constantly call in and request changes to their website. They were doing this 4-5 times a day, which was causing the team a lot of unnecessary stress.
T - My role was to handle these requests and make sure they got completed as soon as possible.
A - I had to figure out how to stop these clients from calling so often so that we could focus on other tasks at hand. After researching this situation and speaking with other members of the team, I came up with an idea that would allow us to send out reminders to our clients at specific times throughout the day so that they could actually pay attention when we did call them back.
R - It worked! The client stopped calling so often and we were able to focus on developing other parts of their website instead.
Finding ways to cut costs, increase efficiency, and reduce turnover
S - Our company was having issues in our sales department. We had too many employees for the amount of work being done and we were losing money because of it.
T - I was tasked with finding ways to cut costs, increase efficiency, and reduce turnover in order to save our company's bottom line.
A - I started by hiring a consultant who provided us with an analysis of our current processes and offered suggestions on how we could improve them. We then implemented these suggestions into our workflow, which resulted in increased sales while also reducing turnover rates among staff members due to improved job satisfaction levels.
R - The results were very positive! We were able to reduce turnover rates by 25%, increase profits by 20%, and cut costs by 10%.
Brief to create an app that would help users find out what the weather was like in their city
S - The situation was that we were given a brief to create an app that would help users find out what the weather was like in their city.
T - Our task was to work together as a team and come up with ideas for how this app could be made, then present our ideas to the client. The client couldn't decide which idea they liked best so it became a race against time.
A - We had to decide between two ideas: one which involved using the user's location information through GPS or Wifi and other which involved using their phone number instead. We decided on using the phone number method because it was quicker to implement and it would mean less users would get caught out by not having access to either GPS or Wifi services on their device. We divided up tasks so each member of the team could focus on doing what they did best and also so we could all contribute equally towards creating our final product (i.e. design).
R - We ended up creating a prototype within 24 hours which included both frontend and backend elements such as database management systems as well as server side code development
The client had been having problems with their website
S - I was the sole employee at a remote job, and one day, I received an email from one of our clients asking for help.
T - The task is help to solve problem of our client.
A - The client had been having problems with their website, and they said they had tried to fix it themselves but were having trouble figuring out what was going wrong. So I immediately got on the phone with them and talked them through some troubleshooting steps we could take together to determine what was causing the issue. After we had finished talking through some basic steps like checking if there were any errors in their code, we decided that it might be an issue with their hosting provider, so I called up our hosting provider's support team and asked them if they could check out the website and see if they could find anything wrong with it.
R - We ended up determining that some files had been corrupted during an update, which explained why the site wasn't working properly—and luckily, this was something that could be easily fixed by uploading new versions of those files back onto the server! Once we'd done that, everything started working fine again for both us and our client.
Given a task to write an essay that had to be submitted by the end of the week
S - There was a time when I was part of a team working on a project. We were given a task to write an essay that had to be submitted by the end of the week.
T - I was given the task to write down all facts and figures related to our topic, which was social media.
A - I knew that I had to think on my feet in order to deal with this situation because there was only one day left before our deadline and we still had a lot of work to do. I went out of my way by reaching out and contacting people who worked in the industry so that they could provide me with the necessary information for my essay.
R - This resulted in me being able to complete my task on time and submit it successfully.
