Those of you with busy jobs...

That doesn't actually say conflicting demands on your work time, does it ? Is there a time where you've had conflicting demands from work/ home ? (ie, planning a surprise 60th birthday party at the same time as doing staff training, or something ?)

Sorry, that's the best I can immediately think of. What is the job for ?

Thanks Orly.

So I've failed at the first hurdle - failed to read the question properly LOL Maybe I should scrap the idea.

The job is what I do now but a much more exciting industry which I have an interest in anyway.

I'll have a think re non-work situations too....but none immediately jump out at me. I have a pretty easy life really.

I wouldn't say 'failed at the first hurdle'. Do you do any voluntary work that you could talk about ?

It's worded openly so you can use either work or home, it is okay to use a work one!

Can't you just imagine what you would do and write along those lines?

Could you say something along the lines of you were working to a deadline of Wednesday with one lot of work and then suddenly a colleague was off sick and had left some urgent jobs so you had to juggle both and then just explain the process like you;ve said above, ie checked what 'urgent' meant with the people wanting the work done, distributed your time evenly between the two main tasks, or perhaps put one on the back burner completely, may have even asked someone else for help/delegated certain tasks. You may have had to say no to some aspects ie identified quickly it wasn't possible so they could delegate tasks to another colleague too.

I'm not sure why I even clicked as I don't have a busy job ? But I have been asked similar if not identical questions on the spot in interviews and managed to answer okay. I think it can seem much more difficult to think when you have more time, much easier on the spot,

Maybe try to imagine youare just having to answer on the spot and just type out whatever springs to mind and you ca always amend it after, better to have something to work on.

I think I would be looking at work / home conflicts (and of course stressing how I managed to cope with work) with a question like this.

I feel your pain - I struggle with the arty side of application forms!

Oh, and RE: how did you go about planning your own time or resources effectively to complete the tasks on time or to the required standard?"

I'd say something along the lines of you allocated more time to the more skilled tasks and scheduled these first to ensure they were done so if these did take longer than planned, you had time to identify this and then call upon others to help with the less-skilled tasks. Say that you planned the time based on experience of other similar tasks.

I wouldn't worry about the example being weighty enough as you say, it's not the example or task they are interested in, just how you can demonstrate how you tackled it. Like I said, just think what you would do if this situation arose and write that. These are 'behavioural interviewing' type questions based on the premise that past performance predicts future performance so if you can demonstrate you can do this sort of stuff, you'll be fine.

Oh, and I'd be tempted to say that you did come across a difficulty, say one of the more difficult tasks did take longer than expected for some reason and then you can say that you identified this quickly with enough time to rope someone else in. It usually tells them a lot more to say, oh that went a bit wrong but I acted quickly to rectify it rather than say yes, I had a tough job to do and I did it all perfectly. Sorry, repeating myself now.

Personally I wouldn't use a work/home example for this question at all- to me, that would just make you seem insufficiently committed to the job. I would definitely talk about conflicting work demands.

Having said that, my work background is one in which it was normal that everything came second to the job- maybe other places are more reasonable.

Words cannot describe how much I hate those kinds of job applications - I always get the sense that they have a "right"answer in mind and if you don't give it...

I suspect what they are looking for is about prioritisation/delegation/asking for help. If there's no real exmple you can give I would be minded to lie, tbh. The truth is that in most real situations you either pile in the hours, or skimp on quality, or outsource, or a mixture of the three.

Oh - I suggest you use the phrase "manage expectations" in your answer. ?

Thanks everyone. Some good examples there to use. As I say, I know the theory and have had busy jobs in the past - I just can't remember any specific incidents.

I think I'll come up with a work related example, as I think that is probably what they are looking for (especially as I am employed at the moment - it's not as if I don't have a job so have to think of non-work examples)

Just seen this reply...love it.

Gawd this brings back some bad memories.

My job is pretty full on and I can think of loads of examples but sadly none of any use to you, sorry! I think, as Soph says, there's a few key concepts/buzzwords to get in. I don't think it's the end of the world if you can't remember every specific of a particular instance.

My absolute least favourite question on the last one of these I had to do was "How do you manage to juggle work, family and leisure time?" (in 50 words). I was sorely tempted to just put "With difficulty" ?

You beat me to it! We do a lot of managing expectations at our place. It sticks in my throat every time I have to say it. ?

This is a question we use for interviewing graduates / MBA candidates - basically want them to show that they prioritise the needs, time plan so they can have things running concurrently if other people are involved (and take account of needing others input), if can't make deadlines let people know proactively, test the deadline (is it real or something set up because people want to go home early) and so on