Interview Questions

How Do You Handle Stress? – Interview Question #Sample Answers #Tips

During an interview, every candidate is asked tons of questions. From tell us about yourself, to asking about the employment gap, to tricky questions like why do you want to change the job? But there is another question which puts even the greatest candidates in a muddle, and that is – How do you handle stress? Your answer might be that you never get stressed. Well, let me tell you, that’s never possible. Just like in life, in our jobs, too, we come across tons of obstacles. But how we, as employees and individuals handle it, speaks volumes about us.

Whenever this question is popped, we think about all the stressful times we have faced during our professional careers. Now, you could be great at managing challenging situations, and you could be super cool-headed. But how do you have to communicate this to your employers is what makes the most difference.

How well do you handle stress at work?

In this post, we will tell you answer ‘How do you handle stress?’ question brilliantly.

Why Does An Interviewer ask “How to Handle Stress?”?

Find a Perfect Fit for the Role

Interviewers and hiring managers always need the best employee and the perfect fit for the role. All roles come with handling stressful situations. No situation in a job can be an easy one. All recruiters want a candidate who is reactive to stress in a non-disruptive manner. As an employee, you definitely must not shut down due to stress. No employer likes an employee who puts others and themselves through unnecessary stressful situations and then cannot handle it.

To Maintain Healthy Pressure in Organisation 

Knowing beforehand how the candidates can handle stress becomes a vital factor for all employers. All hiring managers love and need employees who are motivated by healthy pressure, and this is the pressure that helps them to produce quality and efficient work. While asking this question, recruiters are looking for employees who keep the lines of communication open so that stress becomes a shared activity and is not only a burden of one employee.

To Ensure Enhancement of Employee’s Performance

Knowing how employees and candidates can handle stress becomes a vital factor for recruiters, as this is a factor that can act positively and negatively on the employee’s performance, which can bring out similar results on the team and the company’s performance.

Well, now that we know what does an employer want out of this question, let us see a few tips one can keep in mind before answering how do you handle stress brainly at work.

Tips To Answer “How Well Do You Handle Stress at Work?”

Whether you work as a cabin crew, or a business analyst or as a marketing manager, or even as a cashier at any grocery store, stress is one thing that comes with every job.

Employers want people who have handled the stressful situation during their professional careers. They especially want a person who is not mentally devastated whenever they are kept in a setting that becomes stressful and extremely overpowering.

Here are a few tips for you if you do not know how to handle such questions –

Give it a minute to analyse how you see stress as, and how you approach it.

Later, start by considering questions like what were the causes of your stressful situation? How was your reaction to it? Did you manage to reduce the stress? Were you able to help out your team as well? Could you have acted any differently during the situation?

If you are able to answer these questions, chances are you’ve got your answer!

Give examples, and tell your recruiters some stories of how you have handled stress.

Here, you have be careful that these stories should be related to your work life and how you have managed stress in the past. Telling them about any stressful situation of the past, and then telling how you addressed it, approached it and fought it becomes extremely crucial for you. Narrating the whole story in itself is a great answer to the question. Giving them this example shows them how great you are in stress management.

List down and talk about your soft skills.

They could be time management, organization, leadership, problem-solving and much more. These soft skills help you to build a foundation towards leading a professional life which is stress-free, and you become an employee who has the perfect skill to handle any sort of stress at work. The reason why you need to list out these skills is you need these traits to fight the stress. Your interviewer too might be eager to learn about them.

Understand why you are being asked this question.

By asking such situations, your interviewer wants to understand about your nature and skills and whether you are well-equipped to handle stress. Understanding this question becomes crucial because you definitely need to understand what the recruiter needs, and then answer it in that way. You also need to understand that the employer wants to be assured that you are a good fit for the company.

Tell them how pressure motivates you.

There is no denial that stress is the factor that make or break you. Hence, rather than telling your employers how stress tarnishes your mental health, tell them how it motivates you to perform even better. Assure them that stress makes you focus even more and work even more diligently. A lot of times stress could also mean meeting deadlines. Now, a lot of individuals when put under this stress work wonderfully and are able to meet deadlines.

Don’t deny stress, and don’t be stressful about stress.

Every employee needs to understand how stress is ongoing, no matter where they go, whom they meet and what job they do. From being in a call centre, to being the president or the director of the board, stress is something that would come with every job. How you handle stress becomes the crucial part. Therefore, never be stressed about stress.

Never tell your employer you don’t get stresses.

They surely do not want to hear this. Instead, they wish to know how you tackle it. Understand that they are asking this experience not because they wish to grill you. But because they wish to analyse your emotions and behavioural patterns.

How Well Do You Handle Stress Answer? – Considerations for Answer

This is one question that puts the candidates under stress. However, you must understand that this question tells the recruiters how fit you are for the job. One wrong answer or even a word can land you in a soup, and you could lose that opportunity that was already in your favor. Hence, all candidates must always be super careful before answering this question.

Focus on Positive Actions

While answering this question, always make sure to focus on the positive actions that you took during the situation and not the negative feelings that you faced. There are two sides to every coin; similarly, focus on the side of the coin that will get you fruits, and not on the side which will leave you in a pickle. Focusing on how mentally disturbed you were should not be the criteria. Instead, focus on how that stress turned things in your favor, and you were able to get the best results, all thanks to the stress.

Do not say you delegate stress completely

Another thing to keep in mind, that if you are appearing for the role of a manager, never say that you just ‘delegate’ the stress to your subordinates. Well, it’s inhuman to put your burden on someone else’s shoulders. Also, an answer like this is sure to put you in a bad spot. Moreover, nobody wants a boss like this!

Never say Anything Stupid

The most important thing would be, never say anything stupid! Well, this is a given for sure, but one thing you should keep in mind is that things like this can leave you in a plight, and you could just lose up on the chance you were just about to hit strike on.

It is true that everyone has a different method of handling stress; however, your method should be the one that is fruitful and positive for everyone. Nobody wants negative energy around them, especially during testing times. Hence, always make sure to be a positive person, and see the stress in a good way so that it can be beneficial for you, your colleagues, your subordinates, your managers, and ultimately, the company. This is the reason why ‘How do you handle stress?’ becomes such a valuable and pertinent question.

How Do You Handle Stress Answer In Call Center?

Contrary to what people might think, working at a call center is not a cakewalk. It takes up a lot of abilities to work as a call center executive. At every call center, you have to interact with tons of people who are complete strangers. Now, these could be any kind of people. They could irritate you, frustrate and agitate you, but you have to maintain your calm and cool. This is one of the most stressful things to do. Imagine someone screaming at you, yet, you are maintaining your cool. Do you even begin to realize how stressful that can be?

Well, such situations are never easy to handle. But, your recruiters make sure that you are well equipped. They, too, don’t wish to train someone who leaves just in a jiffy. Therefore, always make sure to answer this question well if you are appearing for the role of a call center executive.

The trick to answering this question is to be rational than to be emotional. You must think practically rather than flooding into emotions. Questions like such could make or break your career. However, answering it correctly is on you. Make sure to give out examples and share past experiences to assure your recruiter that you can take care of these situations wisely.

Mistakes To Avoid When Answering “How Well Do You Handle Stress?”

As we said earlier, this is one question that can make or break your chance into the organization. Make sure to always answer this question diplomatically yet accurately. There are tons of answers which can be given to a question like such. But, at the same time, there are also a few things that you must keep in mind before beginning to answer this one –

Never ever say that you don’t handle pressure well
This could be the most terrible and frightening answer for the recruiter, that could leave the situation a nightmare for you. Never tell your employer that you don not handle the situation well. Instead, tell them how you have learnt to crave your way through all the stress there was in your previous employments.
Do not say ‘I don’t get stressed.’
This is not what your employers want to hear, because this can never be true. Therefore, rather than telling them how no situation ever puts you true a stress, make sure to tell them how great you are at managing each and every stressful situation that comes your way.
Never mention things that could have made the situation better.
Understand that this is a weakness that you are pointing at, that you were simply careless. While telling how you have dealt with stress in the past, make sure to tell how goofed up things were, yet how efficiently how handles the situation. For example, never tell your recruiter how you missed a serious deadline that landed you in a puddle of stressful strings. The recruiter will now focus his attention from stress to how you just missed a deadline. In such cases, answers like this evoke weakness, not accomplishments.

Example Answers Of Stressful Situations And How To Deal With Them 

You do not need a perfect answer to the question ‘How do you deal with stress at work?’ You just need to provide your recruiter with a set of examples and how you managed to handle the situation. However, here are a set of examples of how you could answer this question.

In my organization, there was a heavy task that landed up on my team. However, due to the current pandemic situation, most of my team member were caught by the virus. Which made me handle the project on my own. It was extremely challenging, but the stress pulled me through. Chalking and outlining the whole plan helped me to understand and comprehend the project in a better way. Ultimately, I was able to meet the deadline.
I believe that stress often acts as the greatest motivator, and employees do wonders under pressure. Whether it’s to meet a deadline, or to work day in and out on a project. As a marketing manager, I feel most of my work is done when I’m place under targets to meet. Most times, I succeed too. I have had tons of projects with my previous organization wherein I was made to meet deadlines and target efficiently. The stress which meeting the target gives you ultimately also gives you a lot of motivation and pressure to perform better and as per asked for.
For me, communication is the best way to handle stressful situations. Remember never to over-communicate as that too, can be quite stressful. When working on a project, I was the manager of most the projects. I made it a point to keep communicating with my team so as to provide better results and so that the burden is shared. This helped my team to share the load of meeting the deadlines.
I believe that stress can be either good and bad, and it wholly solely depends on how you accept it. It’s true that too much stress does not benefit anyone. However, the healthy stress which motivates you can put your limits and helps you achieve even the unachievable. I believe a healthy amount of stress, good and bad. I think it can be universally accepted that too much stress has never been of much benefit to anyone. However, a good amount of stress can actually help to push our limits and produce better results.
Whenever I’m stressed, I have found that the best motivator for me is the stress itself. Whenever I’m working on a tedious project, I make sure to take a step back and calm myself and remind myself of the goals. This helps me to regain the focus I lost, and regain the strength to work better, and move forward towards my goals. Stress comes with a feeling of being proud of oneself and the team, as once you achieve the goal you are stressing about, you feel accomplished and super proud.

Conclusion

Handling stress is not easy. Neither is answering questions like ‘how do you handle stress?’. However, there is a perfect answer for everyone. Always make sure to add in examples, personal life experiences, etc., to make your answer the most gripping and convincing. These questions are asked to assess whether you are good for the job or not. So, make sure to answer such questions diligently and most convincingly.

All the Best:)

About the author

Atish Ranjan

Hi there, I am Atish Ranjan! I have been into work and business for more than 11 years now; I have given and taken numerous interviews over the years.
Thus, I started TheInterview.top to share my knowledge & experience with you! Hope you enjoy reading here.

About the Author

Hi there, I am Atish Ranjan! I have been into work and business for more than 11 years now; I have given and taken numerous interviews over the years. Thus, I started TheInterview.top to share my knowledge & experience with you! Hope you enjoy reading here.