Ambiguity, one of the new buzzwords you can hear in the interviews. Speaking honestly, back in the day when I was interviewing for jobs (which was indeed a long time ago), if they asked me anything about ambiguity I’d simply remain silent. Or I would tell them that they firstly have to explain what ambiguity means, before I can tell them how I dealt with it at work.
But things have changed a lot over the years. Behavioral questions prevail in the interviews, and hiring managers try everything to catch you off guard, to ask you some question you haven’t prepared for before the interviews. Hence we have questions about dealing with ambiguity (and prioritization, adaptability, etc)….
Before I show you 5 such questions and suggest how you should answer each one, let me clarify what ambiguity means (just to be sure that we are on the same page). From Google dictionary: The quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness. Let’s have a look at some questions about “inexactness” in the workplace.
Talk about a situation when you weren’t exactly clear what your superior (or your client) wanted from you, since their message offered more than one interpretation.
Another situation that happens quite often at work. Each workplace is a fascinating mix of different characters, personalities, and intellects. People use all kinds of languages, and do not realize that workers from other departments, or their direct subordinates, may not understand their message correctly, for example because they do not understand the jargon they use, or the message is too complex for them to understand.
You have a few options how to deal with such situation:
Tell us about the last time you faced ambiguity in work. How did you handle the situation? (Tell me about a time when you had to work on a project with unclear responsibilities.)
This is probably the most typical interview question about facing ambiguity, and it is a very open one. You can talk about a variety of things and situations, such as:
Now, regardless of the situation you choose to narrate, you should demonstrate the right attitude to ambiguity. It is crucial to:
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Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all information you needed
You have been probably confronted with this situation many times, whether in work or in personal life. We never know all we need to know–if we knew it, we would never make a mistake. But life is full of mistakes, and we learn from them, and that’s probably how we grow.
Let me show you a few good sample answers to this question: