How do you prioritize your work?
The interviewer wants to find out more about how you will act on the job. They want to hear that you understand that not all tasks will have the same level of urgency and that you have some knowledge or strategy to draw from when you are assigned competing tasks.
This question is best answered with a brief and straightforward response outlining how you would identify which tasks should be completed first. Describe a time in the past when you had to prioritize or reprioritize your work.
Avoid being too specific in your response if you are drawing from past experience. For example, if you talk about a time you processed invoices with deadlines, the experience may not translate well to work without explicit due dates. Focus instead on the strategies or steps that you take to determine what makes one task more important than another.
"When prioritizing my work, I consider a few different factors. For example, I always consider whether there is a strict deadline or due date on a task. I also take into account who assigned the task and how long I expect it to take. If I can run a report for my Supervisor in five minutes or less, I knock that out to appease them and ease my to-do list."