Answering 'How Do You Prioritize Your Work?' During Job Interview

When it comes to getting your work done, prioritizing becomes a difficult task. So whether it's your office work or any of your daily tasks, prioritization helps to organize a complex task or wrap up dozens of tasks with ease.

Each assigned work can be classified as important or urgent, and accordingly needs to be prioritized. Because of the importance of prioritization of work, this topic becomes an important one during a job interview, and thus the question 'how do you prioritize your work?' is asked. 

Your prioritization strategy reflects your time management and organizational skills. Let's see how to handle the question regarding the prioritization of work during your job interview.

Responding to 'How do you prioritize your work?'

Every hiring manager intends to assess the candidate on the basis of his/her experience, creativity, knowledge, long-term goals, and behavioral skills. Hence, interview questions such as 'how do you prioritize your work?' help the interview panel to judge a candidate's prioritization skills and their ability to meet tight deadlines, handle the daily workload and manage urgent tasks.

So how can you provide an apt reply to 'how do you prioritize your work?' The following points can help you to frame a good answer to 'how do you prioritize your work?'

• Explain your methodology for prioritizing your tasks.
• Focus on finalizing a deadline for a given task.
• Risk management is as important as work prioritization. Hence, take into account the unforeseen situations that may affect the pace of the project.
• Describe your strategy for dealing with distractions.
• An important aspect of work prioritization is stress management. Hence, illustrate the measures you take to keep your stress levels at a minimal level throughout the project.

How do you prioritize your work?- Tips

Prioritizing work is always easier said than done. While for some, prioritizing techniques are a part of their daily activity, for others it may be a hard task. Hence, if you're not very good at organizing your work, the following points may help you to learn this art.

1. List out all your tasks: This method helps you to have all your tasks in one place which helps you to focus better on your assignments. Making a daily task list is good practice to keep track of your assignments and productive hours. It helps you arrange your tasks well to achieve your personal or team goals. However, while you frame your 'to-do' list, your focus must not be on the order but on putting all the tasks in one place. This list acts as your master list. Once the master list is created, priority can be defined in the priority list.

2. Identifying the important work: As stated above, once your 'to-do' list of your daily tasks is ready, the next step is to see if you have any tasks that are important that need to be done immediately. Important work is the one whose completion is crucial, and if not completed within the stipulated period of time, may have major serious consequences. Similarly, you must assess the value of the work based on what importance it has for the business.

3. Flexibility and adaptability: Using your time management skills, you may have planned everything well in advance. However, there are situations where some last-minute changes may demand you to alter your priorities. Hence, planning for the unexpected is equally important. Preparing yourself for risks involved in the project can help you with risk mitigation and prepare better for what lies ahead. It also helps you to re-prioritize your tasks.

4. Don't bite more than you can chew: Another important point is to be realistic and learn where to stop. While you must be motivated to achieve more, you must keep realistic deadlines to finish your priority tasks. Prioritizing your tasks doesn't mean biting more than you can chew. Hence, one must learn to cut down on the less important tasks that are adding unnecessary weight to the 'to-do' list and focus on the major tasks that will help you in critical ways. Removing the tasks that can be put on the back burner for a while from the list makes the list look more achievable and motivates you to achieve your set target for the day.

Determining the project time: It is important to estimate the time to complete each task. This helps to streamline your efforts and prioritize work on the basis of time. Urgent tasks that have a narrow deadline can be taken up on priority. Estimating a project timeline helps to make the process productive and more efficient.

Examples of responses to 'how do you prioritize your work?'

When asked about 'how you prioritize your work?' during a job interview, you may take the help of the following examples to frame your answer.

Response 1

I start by making a to-do list to put all my tasks or daily goals in one place. This acts as my checklist. I then classify my tasks into primary and secondary based on their deadlines. I keep the tasks with longer deadlines in a separate box on my list and highlight the ones that need to be delivered soon. This helps me focus my attention on the tasks that need immediate attention and then come on to the taste with the lowest priority.

Response 2

I assess the tasks and prioritize them based on different factors such as time investments, urgency, etc. Along with that, I create risk mitigation plans for all the critical tasks. In case of any confusion, I am keen on taking suggestions from others and then reassessing the situation and making changes accordingly to the list of tasks.

Response 3

I always try to deliver any client project within the stipulated time period. Hence, to do so, I keep a primary and a secondary deadline for every task. I try to meet the primary deadline but in case of any unforeseen situation a delay happens, I focus on completing the task before the secondary deadline. This helps me to have some flexibility and extra time at hand and enables me to deliver the projects on time. Also, after I meet my primary deadline, I can take a break time and prepare myself to work on my next task.

Response 4

As per the opinions of some productivity experts, lengthier tasks must be taken up first. And I too believe the same. Finishing off the lengthier task first gives me a sense of satisfaction and improves my focus for working on the shorter tasks. Ticking a lengthy task off my list gives me confidence and motivates me to get to the next one.

Quick Sum Up

Confidence is the key to cracking any job interview. But in order to appear confident, good preparation is a must. For this, you must be well informed regarding the job description and company goals to understand what the job actually demands of you. It is important to note that with the 'how do you prioritize your work?' the interviewer wishes to understand your time management skills. Hence, your focus must be to showcase the same during the interview. 

Preparing for the interview through a mock interview is a good way to practice. It helps you to frame appropriate responses for all the possible questions regarding your long-term goals, personality, experience, beliefs, etc. that could be asked during the interview and helps you appear more confident during the actual interview. Keeping some examples ready that you can quote during the interview is a good way to go about your interview preparation.

Apart from your work schedule, the interviewer might ask you how you manage your personal time or how you frame your time management strategies for your daily schedule. Hence, you must be well-prepared with some real-life examples to be stated during the interview.

Last but not the least, a pleasant smile, good communication skills, and positive body language immensely help to leave a lasting impression on the interview panel. So, prepare well, take a deep breath and ace your next job interview.

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