Have you had to handle a company merger or consolidation at any point during your career? What role did you play if you did?

Organizational mergers and consolidations occur when businesses look to become more efficient and save costs. Whether large or small, departmental and organizational consolidations are becoming more commonplace in just about every industry, and HR professionals play a huge role in ensuring that they are a success. By asking this question, your interviewer is looking to understand how you would handle a merger or consolidation as the next HR Consultant with their organization. As you answer this question, be sure to highlight how you have the ability to analyze organizational cultures and boost employee morale by any means necessary if you're having trouble thinking of an example to use for this question, keep in mind that consolidation can be something as simple a transfer of staff to a different department as mandated by an organization. This will work as a great example if you can show that you played a part in making a move successful.

"In 2016, the software company I was working for purchased a smaller outfit, and all operations were being merged onto our campus. This involved onboarding 16 new people onto our staff. I was given about two months' notice. I knew that I had to boost our typical onboarding and orientation procedures because the new staff was likely under a great amount of stress. During their onboarding process, I worked to put together a nice welcome package to go to the new staff's houses, and included in the package was a welcome letter from our CEO that outlined our mission, values, and culture. For their orientation period, we made sure that we matched each person with a mentor, and the mentors received training on how to effectively teach and lead others on our mission, values, and culture. The updates that were made to bring these new staff on board were a huge success as we had zero turnover of that staff within the first year."