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Stress Management

Use these stress management interview questions to find out how candidates perform under pressure and how they deal with stress at work.

Why stress management questions are crucial

Stress is part of life. And most jobs have stressful elements. 

That’s why you need employees who can keep calm in a crisis. 

Employees with great stress management can:

  • Reach objective decisions
  • Keep everyone calm
  • Come up with solutions when the going gets tough

Top tips: 

  • Use behavioral and situational interview questions to find out how candidates handled stress in the past.
  • Avoid generic questions and instead ask candidates to describe specific work examples of when they beat stress.
  • Use realistic examples that make them think about real-life experiences.

Stress management interview questions

  • How do you prepare for presentations to C-level staff and stakeholders?
  • How would you respond if you got back feedback in front of colleagues? 
  • What’s the most stressful situation you’ve ever faced at work? How did you cope?
  • How do you stop a situation from becoming super stressful?
  • How would you calm down a stressed-out colleague?
  • Everyone gets too stressed sometimes. Can you describe a time when your stress resulted in an error at work?
  • How do you cope with tons of changes at work? 
  • How do you manage to keep up your quality work under tight deadlines?
  • Can you stay objective in tough situations? (i.e. having to fire a team member.)
  • How do you balance life stress at work?

Candidates to look for

  • Solution-focused: Look for candidates who offer the best solutions and maintain composure in unexpected circumstances.
  • Calm candidates: Look for candidates who stay calm even when you ask tough questions.
  • Easy to relax: Job interviews are stressful, but don’t be fast to reject candidates who seem on edge at first—as long as they chill out quickly. 

Candidates to avoid

  • They fixate on the cause: Avoid candidates who focus on the cause of the stress, instead of taking action.
  • Stressful candidates: You don’t want an employee who stresses people out, like people with bad time-management skills or people who get wound-up easily.
  • They look uncomfortable: Check in on their body language for some extra clues on their stress levels.
  • They never get stressed: You need a balanced candidate. If they never get stressed they might just not care enough.

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