How to Answer: What do you do when priorities change quickly? Give one example of when this happened.
Advice and answer examples written specifically for an Accounting Clerk job interview.
17. What do you do when priorities change quickly? Give one example of when this happened.
How to Answer
Adapting to change is an essential part of any job, and interviewers want to hear that you'll happily adapt to change when necessary. Begin by telling the interviewer that you're an adaptable person, and you simply change directions when priorities change while maintaining a positive attitude. Next, think about a time when something really urgent came up. This is your example! There are all sorts of last minute urgent situations that might have occurred. Simply share yours with the interviewer. Try to connect this to an accounting clerk history so they know you can do this in the job and not just in life.
If you have no accounting experience, use an example from personal experience.
Written by Samantha Hamilton on February 4th, 2019
Entry Level
"In college, I worked at a hotel as a bartender. I was really motivated to learn new job functions so I'd also been trained on front desk and night auditor roles. On New Year's Eve, I was told to keep the bar open until two in the morning. I did and got extra tips from very happy guests. Our night auditor decided to do a no call no show, and the front desk associate had never been trained on night audit, so at one a.m. I was working both the bar and the front desk. After I closed the bar, I ran the audit reports and easily handled the night shift. I'd been scheduled for the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift the next morning, so I continued my shift after trying to reach both the assistant manager and general manager. Neither responded. I was exhausted and still in my bartender uniform at 3 p.m. New Year's Day when the 3 p.m. girl called and quit. I was honestly about to cry. I was exhausted, no one was answering their phones, and I couldn't leave the hotel with only a limited housekeeping staff there. No one apart from myself was trained on the front desk. The assistant manager never showed up for his shift that day and the general manager was out of state on vacation. At 7 p.m. I finally got the GM on the phone and explained the situation. She called that night's auditor and he came in several hours early to relieve me. I worked from 2 p.m. New Year's Eve until 8 p.m. New Year's Day without a break to ensure that the hotel ran smoothly. Shortly after that, I was promoted to the assistant manager of the hotel. I believe it was my ability to handle changes and challenges that got me the promotion."
Written by Samantha Hamilton on February 4th, 2019
Answer Example
"During my regular duties, my manager rushed in one day looking frazzled. I asked if she was ok and she said that her boss had arrived two days early and none of the reports were ready. She asked me to drop everything and handed me a list of reports we needed. I sent urgent emails and started pulling query reports myself to gather as many of the reports as quickly as possible. We were able to get all the documentation to review with her boss pretty quickly and he was satisfied."
Written by Samantha Hamilton on February 4th, 2019
Experienced
"When performing a quarterly control, we found a bug in the system that was provisioning access without approvals. This would have lead to a control failure on several different levels. We had what we referred to as a "fire drill". We immediately ran the control for access management and researched all 480 individuals who'd been granted access to ensure they didn't touch anything they weren't supposed to. This meant dropping everything we were doing to ensure that we focused on this. Most of the team was still caught up in year end so we put these 480 meetings in between year end inquiries while documenting every step of the process. We were able to complete this review within a week and found that no one did anything they weren't supposed to. This saved the company various failures."
Written by Samantha Hamilton on February 4th, 2019