Great communication skills are critical when working as an IT Consultant. Walk me through a time when you were successful in communicating with a person that was difficult to work with, and under difficult circumstances?

How to Answer
1st Answer Example
2nd Answer Example

Throughout corporate America, you'll find your garden variety of different personalities from strategic thinkers, passive aggressive profiles, and of course your ego maniacs. Dealing with difficult people is an art. There's a few ways you can learn to adapt to an environment, culture and difficult circumstances without compromising the success of the project. First, start with the common issues that a difficult person will present to you. He/she will likely try to take credit for the work you completed, or blame you for missing their deadlines. An easy way to handle this is to explain that even though they blamed you, you have no ill will towards them, and actually offered to help with their project so they could get caught up. Another approach is to summarize the issue, then explain that you communicated with the other person and spent time with them to solve the problem.

"I've worked with all types of personalities, and have found that a diplomatic approach has worked best for me. The first thing I address with the other person is the blame game. Learning why you are blamed gets you once step closer to resolving the problem. In this case the client was having issues meeting deadlines which caused other departments to also miss their deadlines. I immediately focused on a problem, how to solve it, and started by showing my willingness to get along and help get the project back on track."

"It's extremely important to me to avoid getting upset or venting about the person who was difficult to work with. I had an instance where a client was rude, and verbally abusive, and didn't give me access to servers, and software that I needed to complete my work. I kept my cool and was polite the whole time. I demonstrated how they would see immediate results and a turn-around of their project if we could all work together and I could have access to certain files and folder to get my work done, and they agreed."

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How to Answer: Great communication skills are critical when working as an IT Consultant. Walk me through a time when you were successful in communicating with a person that was difficult to work with, and under difficult circumstances?

Advice and answer examples written specifically for an Avanade job interview.

20. Great communication skills are critical when working as an IT Consultant. Walk me through a time when you were successful in communicating with a person that was difficult to work with, and under difficult circumstances?

How to Answer

Throughout corporate America, you'll find your garden variety of different personalities from strategic thinkers, passive aggressive profiles, and of course your ego maniacs. Dealing with difficult people is an art. There's a few ways you can learn to adapt to an environment, culture and difficult circumstances without compromising the success of the project. First, start with the common issues that a difficult person will present to you. He/she will likely try to take credit for the work you completed, or blame you for missing their deadlines. An easy way to handle this is to explain that even though they blamed you, you have no ill will towards them, and actually offered to help with their project so they could get caught up. Another approach is to summarize the issue, then explain that you communicated with the other person and spent time with them to solve the problem.

Written by Tom Dushaj on February 5th, 2019

1st Answer Example

"I've worked with all types of personalities, and have found that a diplomatic approach has worked best for me. The first thing I address with the other person is the blame game. Learning why you are blamed gets you once step closer to resolving the problem. In this case the client was having issues meeting deadlines which caused other departments to also miss their deadlines. I immediately focused on a problem, how to solve it, and started by showing my willingness to get along and help get the project back on track."

Written by Tom Dushaj on February 5th, 2019

2nd Answer Example

"It's extremely important to me to avoid getting upset or venting about the person who was difficult to work with. I had an instance where a client was rude, and verbally abusive, and didn't give me access to servers, and software that I needed to complete my work. I kept my cool and was polite the whole time. I demonstrated how they would see immediate results and a turn-around of their project if we could all work together and I could have access to certain files and folder to get my work done, and they agreed."

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