TELL ME AN EXAMPLE OF A CHALLENGING OR DIFFICULT SITUATION YOU HANDLED

A recruiter at Emirates, Etihad or Qatar will want to know how you will respond to unforeseen challenges and difficult situations in your current work.

They’re a good overall test of your person-to-person communication and problem solving abilities.

Since it’s about recalling an actual experience (as opposed to imaginatively working through a presented scenario), they should be less stressful to answer.

Everyone has had to deal with a difficult situation at work—when you talk about yours in an interview, you show a vulnerable, human side of yourself. Just be sure that the story you tell has an ending in which you overcome the difficult situation, and learn an important lesson about yourself (which you should of course let your interviewer know about). Use the STAR approach - Situation, Task, Action and Result.

Aside from setting the scene with the STAR technique, your answer should primarily focus on how you handled the situation.

After all, your interviewer already knows difficult people exist; so there’s nothing to prove there. But people who can handle them professionally? They’re harder to come by.

Bearing this in mind, it’s a good idea to ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you listen to the other person?

• Could you have changed the situation?

• Could you have been reasonably been expected to put up with it – and if not, how did you stand your ground?

• Did you keep your cool?

And remember: always follow with how you eventually resolved the situation. Without a positive ending, you’ll only end up giving the recruiter more questions about your character than answers.