How do you strike a balance between your professional life and your personal life?
Engaging in a formal recruiting process takes time and money. Not only does being short staffed wear down and burn out existing staff, but planning, recruitment, and employee selection is rigorous, takes time, and requires diligence and prudence. So your interviewer wants to make absolutely sure you are the right person for the job, ensuring the person they choose can handle stress, and won't bring their personal issues into work further burdening and wearing down the team. Your answer should reveal your emotional intelligence, if you are governed by your stress, and how your stress from work, home, or both impacts your performance and has the potential to impact others on your team. So they want to make sure you have solid skills to proactively manage balancing both your work life and personal life. It's okay if you occasionally take your work home with you, or if you need to take time off from work for personal matters. The interviewer wants to know how you strike a balance, and aren't governed by chaos.
"I know how important it is to avoid burnout. For that reason, I create a solid work/life balance for myself by keeping my day organized and sticking to my schedule as much as possible. I spend my weekends and evenings with my family and friends, doing things I love, and that energizes me, such as going for a run, hiking in the mountains, or taking a bike ride. Then there are my methods for ensuring my time management is habitual. No matter what alarm clock you use, the snooze button is there. I never hit mine. I keep a jar of chocolate-covered espresso beans in a jar next to my bed. When my alarm goes off, I grab a few of those and pop them in my mouth. Then I'm ready. If I have a lot on my plate at work or at home, I evaluate every piece of the puzzle. I make it all fit into my week. Where there's a will, there's a way. Just spending that bit of time at the forefront to strategize my week allows things to feel more sustainable. I'm proactive, I guess. Reaction is rarely sustainable, in my humble opinion."
"That's an interesting question. I live in the moment almost all the time, and find emotional balance around the clock. If a person isn't consistently balanced, I don't think they can find balance whether they are under extreme pressure at work or trying to relax at home. Like that old metaphor, when you are on the rim of the wheel you'll go up and then you'll go down, but when you are centered in the hub of the wheel, you are in the immovable spot."
Unlock all 35 UBS Wealth Management questions
Prepare for UBS interviewers who assess financial acumen and client-first thinking.
Get Started