Challenging Experience

☼ Address the experience that you'd like to talk about.

☼ Explain why it was challenging for you and the goals you have set to achieve it.

☼ Use action words to tell how you have planned, initiated, originated, established, decided, thought, listened, guided, coached, led, motivated, developed etc etc. to achieve the above goals.

☼ Finally, analyze the results.

The difference between a question about a challenging experience and the previous question, regarding a difficult situation, is not semantic. While a difficult situation refers to specific work related events or issues, the so called 'challenging work experience' often, but not always, relates to a job experience over an extended period.

☛ Describe the situation you encountered in detail.

☛ Tell how you've used your skills to analyze the problem before you considered subsequent actions.

☛ Explain the solution that you selected and your approach - why did you decide to take this particular resolution?

☛ Finally, describe the outcomes/results and what you have learned from that situation.

☛ Your answer should illustrate your abilities to deal with difficult situations effectively.

☛ While answering the question, break the situation into fragments.

This interview question is asked in order to evaluate your communication skills, your ability to solve problems/issues and your conflict resolution abilities (i.e. analytical skills).

If you are in the customer service field, you might encounter one of those difficult customer service situations, where the problem is tough to solve, takes time and the customer was quite incited and angry.

They do not want to hear about your personal challenges and what you went through to overcome it. What they want to hear is a challenge in your professional/academic life that you overcame that can be beneficial to their company.