Did you ever have a conflict with your boss or professor

Did You Ever Have A Conflict With Your Boss Or Professor? | Important Interview Questions

The interviewer asks all of a sudden, “Did you ever have a conflict with your boss or professor?” How do you answer without playing the blame game? The question may be paraphrased as “how did you handle a difficult situation”.

This question is asked to understand one’s behavior. Behavioral interview questions are designed to analyze how you would handle situations and scenarios in the future based on your past experiences.

By asking how you handled a prior conflict, the interviewer wants to get an idea of how you tackle a conflict that may occur once you have joined the organization. How did you handle a conflict? When it comes to the kind of conflict, strictly talk about professional issues. Avoid personal situations at all costs. The interviewer is not interested in listening to your family problems.

It would be awesome to talk about a scenario where the solution you proposed or implemented was mutually accepted by everyone. If you talk about such situations, you’ll describe them with confidence (since you were the problem solver) and also demonstrate your capability to make rational decisions. Here are two sample answers:

Answer #1:

“Recently I had a disagreement with one of my professors about a question that was out of syllabus in one of the semester exams. It was not a major one, but yes I will label it a ‘conflict’. Most of my friends and peers did not attempt this question due to ambiguity.

When I brought the cause into my professor’s notice in private, he remained cold and unconcerned.

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So, I and my batchmates had a discussion following which, we went to him together. At that point, our professor agreed that the question was ambiguous, but he refused to give us grace marks for the same.

I felt disappointed because he did not appreciate the fact that I brought the situation earlier to his notice in private. Besides, he did not suggest an alternative paper or project work, with which students could make up for the lost marks.”

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Answer #2:

“I was managing the creation of our new company presentation, flyers, standees, brochure, and emailers. My team had to meet a very tight deadline because everything had to be delivered on time.

I was in charge of the deliverables and had to manage all my team members which included Marketing, Sales, Graphic Design, Events, and Product Management. My designer was very talented, but he, unfortunately, missed a deadline. When I approached him about the same, he started bad-mouthing me.

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I was taken aback but explained my reasoning again. Eventually, we decided to speak to our AVP about how important and time-consuming this project was. The AVP agreed and ended up assigning other designing projects to another graphic designer.

This took the pressure off my team and then we focused on our priority. Later my designer apologized for the blow-up and his behavior. He also thanked me for my help.”

In case you have never been in a conflict with your colleagues, don’t blatantly say, “I was never in a difficult situation,” and stop. In this case, give an example of a hypothetical conflict and then explain how you would go about it. Tell your thought process, the possible arguments others may come up with, how you emphasize your point, and the expected outcome.

Did you ever have a conflict with your boss or professor? How do you handle conflict interview questions? We’d love to know in the comments.

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