Interview Questions – ‘How do you deal with stress and pressure?’

For Service-leavers who haven’t got recent interview experience, the prospect can seem daunting. Here, we dissect another of the more common but no less difficult interview questions so that you can show your best side to interviewers and land your next post-Services role.

‘How do you deal with stress and pressure?’

Job description
The job description indicates what you’ll be doing day-to-day and is likely to be the basis of behavioural interview questions. Basically, the interviewer wants to know if you understand the role.

You’ll need to start thinking of times when you dealt with stresses and pressures – ideally that demonstrate strengths of character and that relate to the core skills required for the job.

Isn’t it obvious?
OK, so you’re a Service-leaver or Veteran and if a cupcake civilian can handle it, you’d think that you can too. The difficulty is that there are different types of stresses and pressures on civvy street and in any case, not every civilian understands the rigours of the type of Military life you’ve been living. 

Winging it
You might think that this is an answer that you can just scoop off the top of your head but a bit of preparation (as always) will make your answer more relevant and concise.

Soft skills
Remember that some civilians don’t realise that Forces personnel have ever heard of ‘soft skills’. Of course, it’s impossible to be a Serviceperson without acquiring skills in communication, organisation, leadership and problem solving – and so on.  

Double check the job description…
You could easily saw away at the branch you’re sitting on if you say something like: ‘I find having to multi-task stressful’ if this turns out to be a pre-requisite of the role.

Managing yourself
Since this is a question about how you manage yourself, don’t select examples about how you accidentally put yourself under pressure, such as: ‘I forgot that there was a deadline for the project…’

Positive
Don’t throw others under the bus! Any examples you use should steer clear of blaming others, such as: ‘My colleague messed up and I was on-hand to fix it’.

Your answers should be about your actions rather than blaming others for problems.  Keep it positive.

Stop pretending
Don’t pretend that you breeze through life without a care in the world, seemingly immune to daily pressures. Similarly, don’t think that you’re impressing anyone by saying something bullish like ‘I thrive on stress’.

Worse still – don’t say that you are motivated by stress – ideally, you should be motivated by the broader remit of the role. That said, you might carefully suggest that a little stress can help you consider ways of working smarter or more creatively.

Talk about how you manage stress in yourself and others.

Can you cope?
The interviewer simply wants to know if you understand the causes of stress in the particular role you’re applying for and if you have a plan as to how to handle things. 

Behavioural Interviews
If you’ve been preparing for interviews, you may well have come across the term, ‘behavioural interviews’. These are designed to open up a discussion about how you might deal with particular scenarios pertinent to the role you’re being interviewed for.

They usually start with a question about specific incidents that you’ve handled in the past, such as: ‘How have you dealt with…?’ or ‘Give me an example of…?’