One of the things we love most about what we do is helping candidates feel confident before they walk into an interview. Recently, we were preparing a candidate for an interview when we asked a question that comes up quite often:
Can you tell me about a time something went wrong during production and how you handled it?
He paused.
We could see he had the experience. He'd worked in production for years and had dealt with breakdowns, faults, and unexpected problems before. The challenge wasn't that he didn't know the answer. The challenge was that he didn't know how to explain it.
So we tried something different.
We asked him, "Can you tell us how you make a cup of coffee?''
He smiled and replied, "Boil the kettle, make the coffee and add milk."
We laughed and said, "That's exactly what you've just done with your interview answer."
It's correct, but you've skipped all the important parts.
If someone had never made a cup of coffee before, they'd probably have a few questions. How much water goes in the kettle? How much coffee do I use? Do I add the milk first or last? How do I know when it's ready?
So together, we broke it down into each step. That's when it clicked.
Interview questions work in exactly the same way.
When an employer asks you to describe a production problem, they're not just interested in the problem itself. They want to understand how you think, how you respond under pressure and how you approach a situation. Instead of jumping straight to the outcome, take them through your process:
• Did you first make sure the area and the people around you were safe?
• What alerted you that there was a problem?
• What immediate checks did you carry out?
• How did you identify the root cause?
• Who did you communicate with or report the issue to?
• What actions did you take to get production running safely again?
• How did you confirm that the problem had been properly resolved?
• What was the final outcome, including any impact on downtime, quality or production?
• What reports, maintenance records or incident documentation did you complete?
• Were any SOPs, checklists, training processes or preventative maintenance schedules updated?
• What follow up actions were put in place to prevent the same problem from happening again?
Think of it as teaching someone how to do your job. Don't assume the interviewer knows what happened. Take them through it step by step, just like you would if you were explaining how to make a cup of coffee.
The best part of this story is that our candidate went to his next interview, used this exact approach, and afterwards told us that no one had ever explained interview questions to him like that before. He said it completely changed the way he answered them.
That conversation reminded us that sometimes people don't need more experience. They just need someone to show them how to tell their story.
If you're preparing for an interview this week, remember the coffee. Slow down, explain your thinking, and don't be afraid to talk through each step.
You know more than you think you do. Sometimes you just need to let the interviewer see it.
