Do you know why we tend to ‘freak out’ when we are under lots of tension? Our brain switches over to an instinctive defense system and our body initiates producing adrenaline. These changes override our normally logical thought procedure and the result is not pretty. The trick is to be prepared and stay calm.

There is a very great chance you’ll be asked the Behavioral Interview Question –

What has been the most stressful situation you’ve ever found yourself in at work? How did you manage it?

Here we are confronted with a few issues. When telling a story about being stressed, you need to:

• Ignore making a common situation sound like it caused you stressed.
• Ignore sounding as though you couldn’t handle the stress.
• Ignore over-describing what the stress was like.

You need to look like someone that manages pressure easily, which means you require avoiding saying “I was coming close to a deadline and I felt as though I couldn’t handle it” because you will be faced with several deadlines. You do not want to tell stories about struggling with a supervisor, struggling with a customer, or anything that might be a normal part of the new position.

Instead, focus on universally stressful scenarios, minimize how much you talk about the stress, and focus instead on what you did to resolute it.

Good Answer

“We were coming across a deadline at COMPANY X, and our whole computer system crashed right before it was due. I called IT instantly and while they fixed it I went to pick up my personal laptop. I went back to work and started working on the last parts of the project that I could until IT fixed it at almost 11pm. Finally I was capable to combine documents and I sent it in, almost with an apology note and a discount on future projects. I knew the condition could have been a disaster, but IT actually saved the day, and from then on I started backing up projects more frequently online to ignore any last minute problems.”

Notice that with this kind of answer, you didn’t even say you were stressed. Instead, you identified a universally stressful situation (computer crashing) and focused only on what you did to solve it. You even thanked someone for their help, while still implying credit for staying up late to complete it.

You might not have had an answer quite so perfect, but every position will have its universally stressful moments. Share something the employer can recognize with, and come up with all of the ways you handled to solve the situation, including what you “did” in the future to ignore it.