Because the entire point of an interview is to make yourself look good- you need to be sure to choose a relevant story with facts that allow you to present it in a positive way. You may take PTO or go unpaid,"- that's a red flag. To see if you can prove to them that you handle deadline pressure well. How do you organize your work when you have to juggle multiple projects/clients at the same time? Over the years, I've asked about deadlines in interviews very frequently. Now, they might be asking this because it is a big part of the job that you are interviewing for. IME- if you're told something along the lines of "We're shutting down the last week of the year so that you can enjoy time with your family. Over the last few posts, we have shown some of the questions that employers may ask with regard to deadlines.An applicant that cannot handle stress is going to suffer in productivity when deadlines … In this article, we explain why employers ask this question and how you can best answer it. Stress is a normal human response, and we all deal with it in different ways. Obviously, you are going to claim you handle pressure well. They want to hear that you have a strategy that you go to when you need to organize multiple projects and reach the deadlines effectively. It is important to be able to meet deadlines in many careers. This question gets asked because at some point, someone in the interview process thought it made sense to get an idea as to how you deal with multiple tasks. This question is both about how you handle priorities as well as working under pressure. There is not necessarily a “Wrong” answer here, only an answer that is not specific enough, or one that relies on someone else. One of the interview questions that is very common relates to working under tight deadlines. Primarily because it's extremely disrespectful- the execs get plenty of vacation and have plenty of cash and probably knew it was coming far in advance. Consider your previous experience and reference a time in which you had to listen and write at the same time to complete multiple objectives. The employer is looking for specifics about what you do to organize. Giving a good response may increase your chances of being hired. Here are some sample interview questions to evaluate candidates’ prioritization skills: Examples of prioritization interview questions. If you're in an interview and the employer asks you how you handle stress, it's because they know you're going to deal with stress at some point in the workplace and they want to know how it will affect you. Deadline Interview Question Number 3 – How Do You Prioritize Multiple Projects with the Same Deadline? There are very few companies where the speed and urgency are not important. How to Answer the 'Tell Me About a Time When You Missed a Deadline for a Project/Assignment' Behavioral Interview Question Be Careful With the Example You Choose to Share. During a job interview, it’s likely you will be asked how well you work under pressure. Describe a typical day at work. This is one of the questions where job seekers usually react exactly the same way. Do so with confidence, otherwise, the company may doubt your resolve. Once you’ve figured out what the interviewer is looking for, match your qualifications to the job and emphasize those skills that are most valuable to the employer. When an interviewer asks you to describe how you'd handle a situation where you were required to finish multiple tasks by the end of the day, you can safely bet that handling multiple projects at the same time is going to be part and parcel of your (potential) new job. This is your opportunity to show you are likely to perform well even under difficult circumstances. If you’re reporting to more than one manager, how do you prioritize your duties? Interviewers often ask this question to understand how you handle multitasking in a specific and common scenario.