Practice 25 Burns & McDonnell interview questions covering technical expertise, project delivery, and employee ownership culture.
Question 21 of 25
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
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Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
Your interviewer is curious about where your priorities lie. Primarily, they want to learn whether you prioritize your own goals above the goals of the team, which they'll be able to determine by whether your answer advertises you deserve all the credit for the team's success, or whether you took pride in the group's efforts, and your contribution to those efforts. Your answer needs to strike that fine balance of showcasing your merits through humility.
"To fulfill our mission of making our clients successful, we have to work together. Working together involves collaboration, cooperation, honesty and support... expectations we have of one another when working together."

Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
"I recently had an experience where one of our employees was going through a difficult time in their personal life, and they were feeling pretty down. Normally, this individual is a real motivator for the rest of the team and raises morale. But their state was negatively impacting morale, so much so that a project we were working on was running behind. So, I started focusing on turning the team's morale around, held some activities, and planned a project site visit where we met with some influential individuals who boosted morale. Then I was able to continue to build on that momentum and got the project back on track."

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Written by Kevin Downey
25 Questions & Answers • Burns & McDonnell

By Kevin

By Kevin