Conflict Management - What Do Employers Look For?

When assessing your conflict management skills, interviewers look for past evidence that you:

• Encourage creative debate, open feedback and the sharing of opinions

• Anticipate and take action to prevent counter-productive confrontations
• Manage and resolve conflicts and disagreements in a fair and effective way

Example Questions Asked At Competency Interviews For Conflict Management

Here are some example competency interview questions covering conflict management. In-
between the main questions are examples of probing questions you might be asked if your
interviewers want more information.

• Describe a time when they was conflict in your team

- What action did you take?

- Why?
- What was the outcome?
- What would you do differently next time?

• Do you think conflict or differences of opinion can ever be positive forces in a company?

- Why or why not?

- Can you give us an example of where you think they have been a positive force?

• Describe a time when you disagreed with someone at work about how to do things

- How did you feel?

- What was your approach?
- What was their reaction?
- What was the outcome?

• Tell me about a time when you had to present an idea and experienced conflict

- How did the conflict show itself?

- What did you do?
- Was the conflict resolved?

• Can you tell me about a situation where conflict led to a negative outcome

- What prevented a positive outcome?

- How did you feel?
- What did you learn from the experience?