How would you handle a situation where a colleague was being very difficult to work with?

How to Answer
1st Answer Example
2nd Answer Example

In the team-based atmosphere at Pinterest, departments with different skills and backgrounds can often see things from different points of view. These situations can cause some internal conflict between coworkers. With this question, your interviewer is looking to hear how you handle situations where you are working with someone who can be difficult. To give them the sense that you can work through conflict professionally and sensibly, try to talk through how you handled a conflict at work previously in the past and highlight the interpersonal skills that you used to help make it a positive situation.

"In all honesty, any great work atmosphere that I've been a part of in the past has involved a conflict between colleagues. In situations I have witnessed, the conflict has stemmed from very open-minded people giving their two cents in particular situations and two people not seeing eye to eye. This happened recently to me in the planning phases of a new project. One of our UX Designers and I disagreed on the final layout of a new software rollout we were planning. It worked best for us to talk about our ideas and list the pros and cons of our ideas. I kept an open mind to learn from her point of view, and she did the same to me on my end. This led us to come up with a great compromise in the end."

"Last year, we had a new engineer join the team that was hired on from his internship with us. From his first day, he made it evident that he would only handle certain tasks within our team and only work on certain projects. As his mentor to help get him up and running, I sat him down and discussed the expectations of each of our engineers as part of our larger team. I explained to him that our approach was not to pigeonhole ourselves into smaller tasks but rather be well-rounded engineers who could handle any project and cover for each other if needed. He really appreciated this approach when I explained the benefits for his long-term career goals with this approach. This example shows my approach to being very direct with people that I have a conflict with in the workplace and doing so in a very professional and educational manner."

Next Question

How to Answer: How would you handle a situation where a colleague was being very difficult to work with?

Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Pinterest job interview.

1. How would you handle a situation where a colleague was being very difficult to work with?

How to Answer

In the team-based atmosphere at Pinterest, departments with different skills and backgrounds can often see things from different points of view. These situations can cause some internal conflict between coworkers. With this question, your interviewer is looking to hear how you handle situations where you are working with someone who can be difficult. To give them the sense that you can work through conflict professionally and sensibly, try to talk through how you handled a conflict at work previously in the past and highlight the interpersonal skills that you used to help make it a positive situation.

Written by Ryan Brunner on September 6th, 2021

1st Answer Example

"In all honesty, any great work atmosphere that I've been a part of in the past has involved a conflict between colleagues. In situations I have witnessed, the conflict has stemmed from very open-minded people giving their two cents in particular situations and two people not seeing eye to eye. This happened recently to me in the planning phases of a new project. One of our UX Designers and I disagreed on the final layout of a new software rollout we were planning. It worked best for us to talk about our ideas and list the pros and cons of our ideas. I kept an open mind to learn from her point of view, and she did the same to me on my end. This led us to come up with a great compromise in the end."

Written by Ryan Brunner on September 6th, 2021

2nd Answer Example

"Last year, we had a new engineer join the team that was hired on from his internship with us. From his first day, he made it evident that he would only handle certain tasks within our team and only work on certain projects. As his mentor to help get him up and running, I sat him down and discussed the expectations of each of our engineers as part of our larger team. I explained to him that our approach was not to pigeonhole ourselves into smaller tasks but rather be well-rounded engineers who could handle any project and cover for each other if needed. He really appreciated this approach when I explained the benefits for his long-term career goals with this approach. This example shows my approach to being very direct with people that I have a conflict with in the workplace and doing so in a very professional and educational manner."

Written by Ryan Brunner on September 6th, 2021

Next Question