QUESTION 8 OF 30

Tell me about a crisis you encountered at work and how you handled it.

This is an example of a behavioral question. A crisis in the workplace is not common, but they do occur. The Cisco interviewer will ask you about a crisis to better understand how you behave when faced with this situation. They are less interested in the actual solution you used to overcome the crisis and more about your ability to remain calm, develop creative solutions to the problem, and work your way through the crisis. You can use the STAR format to frame your answer to this question. Talk about the Situation or crisis, describe the Tasks you needed to accomplish to resolve it, discuss the Actions you took, and review the results you achieved. One of the results may be what you learned that could apply to similar situations if hired by Cisco.

"The pandemic severely impacted my last organization. All work was stopped, and all employees were sent home in the early days of the crisis. This left many projects unfinished and the possibility of us missing critical deadlines. It occurred to me that our development team could function remotely if provided the right tools. I created a list of the technology we would need and distributed it to the team for their review and input. Once the list was finalized, we purchased and installed the technology in each team's home offices. We were back to our former levels of productivity within a week of the shutdown. We all worked extra hours to get caught up, and no deadlines were missed. This proved that with a little innovation and creative thinking, we could overcome the most challenging issues."

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Cisco Computer Hardware Engineer Mock Interview

Tell me about a crisis you encountered at work and how you handled it.

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