Regardless of the type of job you’re applying for or which market a company is active in, honoring deadlines is essential. In every position, you will have to work with deadlines. Otherwise, nothing would get accomplished. This is one of many reasons why interviewers are interested in how you perform under the pressure of tight deadlines.
When you’re applying for a job, you need to make sure that you are able to provide strong answers to common job interview questions. One of these commonly discussed topics is the ability to handle deadlines and whether or not you can handle them at all. The best way to answer such questions is by using work experiences to prove that you have successfully dealt with deadlines in the past.
These kinds of interview questions are called behavioral interview questions. The interviewer expects you to provide them with an example of a time you handled a deadline under pressure and delivered the desired results.
Related questions to assess your ability to deal with deadlines are:
- What is your strategy to successfully deal with tight deadlines?
- Tell me about a time you had to complete a challenging task to a tight deadline.
- Can you handle work pressure without compromising the results?
- Tell me about a time you handled a challenging project?
- How do you prioritize multiple deadlines?
In this blog, we discuss how you can explain how you deal with deadlines. We also talk about how you can use these questions to your advantage during your interview. Furthermore, read more about frequently asked job interview questions here and check our job interview preparation checklist. Find out everything you need to know!
Why Interviewers Are Interested In How You Deal With Tight Deadlines
Interview questions about dealing with deadlines are common during job interviews. The ability to meet deadlines is important in many careers and fields. As you can imagine, there are very few organizations where speed, urgencies, and deadlines are not important. This is also why interviewers discuss this topic frequently.
There are several reasons why interviewers want to discuss how you handle deadlines. The main reason is, of course, to find out if you can handle pressure and deadlines. Interviewers expect you to come up with concrete examples of how you did so in the past. When you do not yet have work experience, you can be asked hypothetical questions on how you would handle such a situation.
Another reason to discuss how you deal with deadlines is to make sure you understand what’s needed for the job. In other words, interviewers want to make sure that you know that there is a certain amount of pressure involved in the job that you’re applying for. Furthermore, they want to see how you respond and if you can prove to them that you are able to handle deadline pressure well.
During your job interview, interviewers, of course, expect you to say that you handle pressure and deadlines well. However, they are looking for that extra confidence that you give in your answers to back up your claims. The interviewers’ goal is to assess whether or not you understand the sense of urgency when needed and how you will perform in the job that you’re applying for.
Tips For Answering Questions About Handling Tight Deadlines
The best tip for answering questions about dealing with tight deadlines is making sure that you’re able to provide a specific answer. This can all be done through good preparation. When interviewers ask candidates about how they have worked under tight deadlines, most will give an answer along the lines of:
‘I’m very accustomed to working under tight deadlines. Basically, all the projects that I work on have tight deadlines. My and I colleagues do everything to meet the requirements of our clients and make sure that we finish our projects on time successfully.’
The answer above is too general. Sometimes candidates include specific details from their particular industry, but it’s still a very general answer. The interviewer is aware of the fact that almost everything you work on has some sort of a deadline. This means that the example answer above tells the interviewer precisely nothing.
Therefore, make sure that your answer includes specific details that show that you understand the urgency of deadlines and that you can perform to meet them successfully. The key to success in this question is to give an effective answer by using an example of a specific deadline and how you were able to keep it.
By using specific examples, you give your answers more weight to demonstrate your value. Also, this way, you impress the interviewer the right way by providing concrete examples of how you handle deadlines.
Learn more about answering behavioral interview questions here.
Example Answers To Questions About Working Under Tight Deadlines
If you want to impress your interviewers the right way, make sure you back up your claims of being able to successfully work under tight deadlines. Below we discuss a couple of examples of answers to the interview question ‘how do you deal with tight deadlines?’. However, these are just general examples. Make sure that you prepare your answers specifically to the position and company that you’re applying for.
Sample Answer 1: ‘How do you deal with tight deadlines?’
‘In my current position, I deal with deadlines daily, and they have become more or less a commonplace. For me, teamwork and communication are key in these situations.
An example of such a situation recently was when a client placed a large order of one of our most popular products but asked if we could make slight modifications to the product to launch in their native market. Our client needed the modified product within a month. Usually, such modifications to that amount of products would take us 5 weeks.
I gathered our manufacturing team to come up with a plan, and we decided to contact our suppliers if they could deliver the needed parts for us to modify our product. This already saved us three days. Next, we asked our quality control department to inspect and audit the modified products as it ran on our production lines. This saved us an additional two days that we needed to meet the deadline.
By adjusting our schedules, we were able to ship the products in time and ensured that we met the client’s deadline.’
Learn more about stress management interview questions & questions about time management and prioritization.
Bonus: How To Answer Questions About Times You Missed A Deadline
After discussing how you successfully handled deadlines in the past it’s not uncommon for interviewers to ask about times you were on a project that failed. The goal of the interviewer is to uncover your work behavior in challenging work situations.
Even though discussing failures can be a sensitive topic and requires some preparation to make sure you do not make the wrong impression, you can use these questions to your advantage. Interviewers want to know how self-aware you are if you are able to reflect on what went wrong and more importantly if you learn from failing. Everybody makes mistakes and interviewers know this as well. Therefore, answering that you have never failed is probably the worst answer you can give.
When you want to discuss a challenging project in which you failed ensure you provide all the relevant details. Explain the situation you were in, what your tasks were in that situation, what mistakes occurred, what actions you took, and the results you got from your actions. The STAR interview technique is the most effective and efficient way of structuring your answer.
Sample Answer 1: ‘Tell me about a time you missed an important deadline’
‘In my previous position, I was working with my team on a project for one of our larger clients. Another, more senior team manager offered me to provide additional team members due to the size of the assignment, but I chose the option to keep the project within my team as I thought that we were able to handle it. I was going to actively be involved in the project and take on tasks myself too.
The scope of the project and the work that needed to be done proved to be too much for the team. The project was divided into three parts, and we failed to reach the deadline for the first part.
I ended up deciding to request the additional team members that I should have added in the first place. Together with the other team manager, I was able to figure out which of these team members could add value to my team, and we were able to finish the second part of the project in time. By doing so, we were able to regain the trust of the client.
The initial failure in the process hurt my ego, but the bounce-back was all due to our team effort. I realized that teamwork, discussing the scope of projects with more experienced managers, and prioritizing is the way to go when taking on large projects like the one that I was responsible for.’
Learn more about discussing failures in job interviews & how to discuss your time management skills.
Job Interview Topics – Common Job Interview Questions & Answers
Below you can find a list of common job interview topics. Each link will direct you to an article regarding the specific topics that discuss commonly asked interview questions. Furthermore, each article discusses why the interviewer asks these questions and how you answer them!
- Accomplishments
- Adaptability
- Admission
- Behavioral
- Career Change
- Career Goals
- Communication
- Competency
- Conflict Resolution
- Creative Thinking
- Cultural Fit
- Customer Service
- Direct
- Experience
- Government
- Graduate
- Growth Potential
- Honesty & Integrity
- Illegal
- Inappropriate
- Job Satisfaction
- Leadership
- Management
- Entry-Level & No experience
- Performance-Based
- Personal
- Prioritization & Time Management
- Problem-solving
- Salary
- Situational & Scenario-based
- Stress Management
- Teamwork
- Telephone Interview
- Tough
- Uncomfortable
- Work Ethic