How to answer the question "how would you do it differently?"

Hi there,

This is indeed an interesting question which is probably relevant for quite a lot of users, so I am happy to provide my perspective on it:

• Generally speaking, the interviewer wants to probe your reflectivity which is not uncommon with behavioral questions. Thus, I would advise you to always prepare an answer to this type of questions.
• In case you told about a situation that did not went well overall, there would obviously be a lot of things you could have done differently. Still, this would not be the perfect example for this type of question anyways.
• In case you told about a situation that went really well, it is obvious that you there are no major things to do differently. Still, I would advise you to think about what you could have thought, said or done faster or in a slightly different way in hindsight.

In case you want a more detailed discussion on how to best prepare the personal fit part of your interviews, please feel free to contact me directly.

I hope this helps,

Hagen

It's difficult to evaluate without knowing what your initial answer was. So I don't know why the interviewer is pressing on this topic. I see a few possibilities:

1. She doesn't think you achieved the desired result (i.e., it was not a good example, or there was poor communication)
2. She is probing for your learning abilities / ability to process feedback (which is odd if it was a success)

My general recommendation here is that when you get a question you don't understand why it is being asked, you should ask them WHY they are asking the question.

For example: “I believe we achieved the intended result, so it is not clear to me why I would take a different approach in this specific instance. Can you clarify why do you think that would be necessary?”

This will give you clarity on what they are looking for, and therefore you answer afterwards should be able to focus on what really matters to the interviewer at that point.

Hi there,

This is essentially them asking “what did you learn?”

In this case, it sounds like they think you didn't solve the problem optimally. There might be 1 or 2 other things you should have done?

Could you have flagged it to your boss? Said something slightly different to the person? Done something afterwards? Prevented the situation altogether by addressing the issue before it become one?

Think about “how you would do it differently”…literally as they've asked :)

Hi!

Try to look at it from a different angle: What have you learned?

Then describe how the lessons learnt would change your performance in future projects.

Best,

Anto

There could be many reasons why the interviewer is asking you this questions - and thinking along those dimensions can help you answer it:

• Lateral thinking: Can you come up with a more creative way to do what you did?
• Pragmatic thinking: Can you do things more pragmatically than what you did and achieve the same result but with a higher consistency? (opposite of creative)
• Regrets: The interviewer wants to check if you had any regrets about the decisions you took and if you could have done it differently with lesser regrets
• Individual aspects: Could you have done some mini-aspects of the achievement differently? Communication, leadership, mentorship, guidance, team-work? anything? Maybe giving an idea along these dimensions can help you highlight your qualities to the interviewer.

You might even want to ask the interviewer what they mean by ‘different’. Maybe they tell you something along any of the above 4 bullets. Then you have it!

There is another similar question: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/i-find-it-hard-to-answer-how-would-you-do-it-differently-11808

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