How to tackle tricky COVID-19 related interview questions

Serious or tricky - interview questions have all along never been easy. And now with COVID-19, these questions have taken an exciting turn.

Let's look at the kind of new questions that have surfaced during this pandemic.

How do you establish a work-life balance during WFH?

Working From Home (WFH) is currently the new working norm around the world.

According to reports, some employees have ended up overworking beyond their usual hours, while others find themselves with a lot of free time on their hands as projects get halted or cancelled.

In the office, the daily routine is mostly influenced by your boss and teammates; now we are mostly confined to our homes, work routines are primarily self-directed.

Thinking ahead, relay an answer that shows how you empowered yourself to adjust to this new environment and routine, and utilise your time effectively and continue to be productive and high performing.

How do you work collaboratively with your teammates or clients?

Behavioural questions are common in interviews to identify a candidate's strengths or weaknesses, and ability to adapt to change.

More than that, this question also seeks to find out how empathic and willing the person is to stick to the usual way of doing things or be agile.

To answer this well, the candidate can highlight the challenges faced, pain points overcame, learning lessons and things that can be done differently moving on.

How do you keep your team engaged and connected?

COVID-19 has affected us in many ways, including mental health.

A question typically for team managers or business leaders, this can be applied to employees.

It seeks to understand how the candidate can cope in tough situations and how he/she can engage and connect with people they work with.