Teamwork Interview Questions

Being able to work well within a team and the ability to interact with colleagues is a critical skill for most jobs. It’s therefore almost a given that you will get questions about teamwork during your job interview. Questions about teamwork are behavioral interview questions that require job candidates to provide examples of situations they’ve been in where they had to use certain skills.

Teamwork interview questions are used to test your ability to communicate and work with others in a productive way. The ultimate goal is to test if you can deal with different kinds of personalities and disciplines that might be part of a team. Therefore, it’s up to you to demonstrate that you’re a team player.

Learn more about common teamwork interview questions and how to answer these questions!

Teamwork skills

Basically, teamwork and the ability to work well with other people comes down to:

- Working within a team to achieve a shared goal in the most effective way possible
- (Active) Listening to other team members and their ideas
- Working for the good of the team as a whole
- Having a say and sharing responsibility

To be able to answer teamwork interview question you first need to know which kind of teamwork skills you can integrate into your answers to actually demonstrate that you possess the needed abilities. Below you will find a list of teamwork skills that you can use to prepare answers to interview questions:

- Active listening
- Conflict management
- Creative Thinking
- Flexibility
- Setting Career Goals
- Listening
- Leadership
- Management
- Problem-solving
- Responsibility
- Respectful
- Teamwork
- Team Building
- Verbal Communication
- Written Communication

How to answer teamwork interview questions

A story is the best way to illustrate your ability to work well with a team under challenging circumstances. For each of the team skills mentioned above (and of course more!) you can prepare a story in case the interviewer asks you to give one. The best way to get an indication of what kind of questions you can expect is to analyze the job description closely. Based on this analysis you can create answers to use during your interview.

The best way to formulate this ‘story’ is through the usage of the STAR method. The STAR interview technique is a straightforward format you can use to answer behavioral interview questions that, for instance, regard teamwork situations. Behavioral questions are questions that begin with:

Tell me about a time when…
Describe a situation where…
Have you ever…?
Can you give me an example of…?
What do you do when…?

The interviewer expects you to come up with a concise and concrete answer to his/her request or question. The best way is to tell this in the form of a ‘story’ that follows the STAR method. STAR is an acronym that stands for:

Situation:
Task:
Action:
Result:

Example questions and answers to teamwork questions

Tell me about a time when you had to work within a team
Give me an example of when you were required to manage a team. How did it go?
Do you prefer to work alone or working as part of a team?
Provide me with an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team? How did you handle it?
What makes a good team player according to you?

Learn more about commonly asked teamwork interview questions & answers

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!