Who doesn’t love a great group project? Working as part of a team? At Enterprise we certainly do! Throughout your whole academic career, you’re put into teams, given projects and you probably excelled or failed to get the job done, as a collective. For some reason however, whenever we’re asked that familiar behavioural job interview question ‘Describe a time when you have worked as part of a successful team?’, it’s like all memory of ever having collaborated with anyone vanishes from our brains. You know you’ve worked with people before, you even wrote down some great examples in your notebook last night, but that rehearsed paragraph doesn’t even sound convincing to you anymore.
At this point it’s worth mentioning that every recruiting manager or interviewer has their own interviewing style, and their own version of the teamwork question. Other examples of this type of interview question include:
- Do you prefer working on your own or as part of a team?
- Tell me about a team project that you worked on.
- In what way are you a team player?
- Describe the time when you worked with a difficult team member, and what you did to overcome the difficulties that arose.
- Can you share an example where working as a team helped you become a better employee?
Asking about your teamwork abilities is probably the most common all of the behavioural interview questions. In fact, being able to work cooperatively as part of a team is one of the key traits we look for when recruiting for our Graduate Management Training programme.
The reason? We want to make sure that you are able to collaborate with others, that you can communicate effectively with the different personalities within the team (and with customers too), and that you can motivate the people around you while gaining the loyalty and support of the team. The ability to recognise and understand the viewpoints of others – your colleagues’ and your customers’ – is extremely important to Enterprise.
So how do you answer it and make it sound believable at the same time? It’s all about providing real examples: are you currently in a sports team or a society? Have you led your team to success or successfully put on an event for your society members? If you’ve been a mentor to other students, this is another great way to show how you are able to coach and provide leadership to others. Are you a member of a study group? That’s a team!
Another great area to pull from is your work experience. You may not have lead a team, but you probably worked alongside someone who wasn’t performing as well and offered a helping hand to assist them in achieving their goals. Whatever you’re doing day-to-day make a note of it as it happens, as you don’t want to regurgitate a sample answer from Google. Keep it authentic and keep in mind the following tips:
- Be specific about the examples of where you have worked in a team. Using the STAR format to structure your job interview answer will allow you to provide the interviewer with a more detailed example of the situation.
- Make them relevant: how did you work cohesively? How did you contribute on an individual level? What did you learn and how can you apply this to the role you’re applying for?
- It’s all about personal brand. You should have no problem talking about how amazing you are and all the fantastic things that make you suitable for the job, so pick an example that allows you to shine: maybe you brought the group together, or resolved a conflict. Even better if your example allows you to talk about other skills you possess, such as sales, or leadership.
Answer the teamwork question with confidence and you’re guaranteed to impress.
Teamwork is highly valued at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Our hardest team workers have gone from management trainees to managing a branch and a team of 50 within two years. Put your teamwork skills to the test with a graduate job at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and who knows where it will take you.
