Adaptability is one of the most important skills that employees should possess. People who are adaptable easily accept new ways of working and changing team environments.

Interviewers ask certain questions to assess your adaptability skills. Through these interview questions, they want to find out how you react in unpredictable work situations but also if and how you adjust to changing environments at work.

Top 12 Adaptability-based Questions to Ask in a Job Interview

1.Tell me about the biggest challenges you faced when starting a new job

2.Describe a situation in which you were assigned new tasks. How did you adapt to this situation?

3.Tell me about a time you had to learn how to use a new system or software at work. How did you approach this, and how long did it take for you to fully understand its features?

4.Tell me about a time you had to work on a task that was outside of your job description. How did you handle the situation? What was the result?

5.Let’s say you’re working on a project for some time when the manager suddenly informs you that the client’s requirements have changed. What would you do?

6.Tell me about how you would readjust your schedule when your manager asks you to prepare a report within a day? How do you make sure that your regular tasks don’t fall behind on schedule?

7.Tell us about a situation in which you had to adjust to changes over which you had no control. How did you handle it?

8.What is your ideal working environment?

9.You face a challenging situation involving three people; your manager, a peer, and a client. All are in an emergency and the only person who can provide a solution is you. How will you manage to satisfy them all?

10.Tell me about a time you had to learn how to use a new tool at work. How long did it take you to understand its features and use it daily?

Why are Adaptability Skills important at Work?

Working on one’s adaptability skills is unique to everyone and varies depending on their specific strengths and development areas. However, here are 4 tips that can improve their adaptability skills in the workplace.

1.Always be open to improvement: You must be aware of any disparities between your actual performance and desired performance levels, as this insight will drive behavioral change. Self-awareness, however, must be balanced with self-belief. Without the latter, increased awareness of development needs can be demotivating and disheartening.

2.Do not focus on proving: Goal orientation describes whether, in approaching a task, the focus is more on what can be learned from it to perform well, or avoiding failure so as to impress others. Although typically subconscious, our goal orientation strongly impacts how much we will take away and learn from our experiences.

3.Practice with a deliberate approach: Experts take a much more deliberate approach when trying to implement new learning to enhance their performance. Make better use of strategies such as goal-setting, and adopt more specific goals about how you can improve your performance in addition to what performance improvement you are aiming for.

4.Metacognitive ability: Metacognitive ability is the ability to think about the way we think and is crucial for maximizing learning. Seeking feedback and reflecting on it are key elements that enable us to extract critical lessons from our experiences. One should be mindful that not all reflection is conducive to learning; helpful self-reflection is characterized by openness, positivity, and a learning, goal-orientated perspective.