I find it hard to answer "how would you do it differently"?

Hi there,

Remember that we can always improve and do things better!

Think about that achievement and reflect on anything that did not go perfectly. Surely there was a way you should have worked a bit quicker/more efficiently, brought people on the journey better, etc. etc.?

If you honestly can't think of anything, then own that and say it! 

Say “To be honest, I do reflect a lot on my work and there are plenty of things in my past I would do differently, but for that particular achievement I suppose I'm so proud of it because I really did to everything right. From notifying xx person to realizing xx insight, I really think everything went as well as one could hope. However, I'm more than happy to talk about a past experience where I would have done a number of things differently (initial failure) if you like?”

Not sure why anyone would ask this question after your biggest achievement.

Anyway, noone is perfect, some ways you could have for sure done whatever you have done better are: 

• Better planning (and thus better time management)
• Do not rely only on your sole forces but ask for expert help (usually one spend a lot of time to get up-to-speed in some topic - by reaching out to experts you can shorten this time)
• Use better tools (that you at the time maybe didn´t have access to)

When I think about my biggest achievement, there are still things I would do differently. 

Not because I would achieve a better result, but because I would get there faster. For example, I could have jumped in to solve that specific conflict sooner. I wasn't immediately effective because it took me some time to understand what worked with that person.

In hindsight, I did the right things. But if I knew beforehand what were the right things to do I would have done them sooner and more of them.

The idea here is that you actually consciously reflect on what you did and what exactly worked so you can be purposeful next time vs. being lucky because you “guessed” how it should be done.

Hope this helps!

Hi!

An important part of your story (even if it is your biggest achievement) should be around the lessons learned.

You can transform the lessons learned into what I would do differently next time. This should make things easier as you always learn something new out of every experience ;)

Hope this helps.

Best,

Anto 

Cristian is spot on.

In hindsight, you can always do things slightly better, slightly different and that's what you need to discuss. 

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!