Answering ‘Are You A Team Player?’ In A Job Interview

Do you consider yourself a team player? Can you walk me through a recent project where you had to work in a team? If I were to ask your manager and colleagues, how would they describe working with you? How would you describe your approach to working with others / relationships / collaboration? These are some common variations of the “Are you a team player?” question in job interviews.

Why ‘Are You A Team Player?’ Is An Important Topic

There are multiple reasons why prospective employers ask about your capacity to be a team player. Workplace cultures that prioritize staff members getting along will prefer team players over lone rangers or people who admit to not working well with others. Even offices where most people work solo might not want to hire candidates who are difficult around other people. For roles that interact with customers, having strong team player skills can be seen as a proxy to strong people skills in general. For roles that require you to work as team to fulfill your responsibilities, then it’s critical that you are a strong team player. For example, management consultants jump from project-to-project with varying teams on each one, product developers or software engineers work on launches as a team of different experts, and marketers who often team up with different marketing specialties or with other areas of the business, such as sales or finance.

How To Answer ‘Are You A Team Player?’

There is no one-size-fits-all interview answer because there are variations to each interview question. At the very least, practice various ways to highlight your team skills, using the above questions from the opening paragraph as a guide. Have a recent project that is team-based ready to talk about. Quote comments from past performance reviews or compliments you have received that showcase your team-related abilities. Be ready to talk about your approach to relating with others – e.g., how you communicate with people, how you build and maintain relationships, and how you work through differences (not all team members will be agreeable!). Include team-produced output in your work portfolio.

Key Points, Words And Themes To Include

Don’t just tell your interviewer that you’re a team player – show them with detailed stories about when you have worked as a team. Outline what you did specifically but also what everyone else did, so it’s clear that this was a team effort, and you are thoughtful enough to give credit where it’s due. Include how many people were on your teams to specify if your experience is with big or small teams or both. (You don’t need to show both big and small team experience because it might not be needed on the job, but when you have a range of experience, that shows valuable flexibility, so share it!) If you have worked with people at different levels, from different company functions and with varying backgrounds, that shows a different flexibility – the ability to get along in a diverse environment – and that is valuable. Details are the proof in an interview response, not any specific word. That said, for the topic of team player, a comprehensive interview answer will likely use the words: team; collaboration; cross-function; multi-level; multi-cultural; we (over I).

Example Answer For A Manager Position

The capacity to be a team player is valued in both entry level and experienced professionals. At the beginning of your career, you will likely work closely with others because you aren’t yet self-sufficient and need others’ experience, expertise or simply familiarity with that company’s specific processes. The more experienced you get, you may have more autonomy over your particular day-to-day work responsibilities, but you start managing others, your projects are bigger and cut across departments outside your own, and/or you have more interaction with vendors, clients or other people outside the company.

Example Answer For An Entry Level Job

Since you need to be ready to showcase your team player capacity and experience at every level, be prepared as your career progresses with recent examples of how you work in teams. As a manager, have specific examples of how you build and maintain a high-performing team. Be prepared to share your approach to evaluating, developing and retaining your talent. Also have examples of working with peers and senior leadership because you will need to show the ability to work well with others who don’t report to you and are even above you in authority and influence. As an entry-level professional, your examples may come from school projects, internships or volunteer and community service since you don’t yet have years of experience to pull work-related examples from.

Use The Same Approach With Other Interview Questions

To ace your next interview, whether it’s a question about being a team player or other aspect of your background, show rather than tell with detailed examples. Use recent examples, so be ready with new stories as your career progresses from individual contributor to manager to executive. It’s not about answering any one question or using a magic bullet word, but rather put yourself in the shoes of the interviewer, think about why they’re asking what they’re asking (is it part of the role? Is it a proxy for how I might handle a specific task or situation?) and address that issue. The ultimate question behind all questions is “Why should I hire you”. Being a strong team player is one aspect of that, but be prepared to showcase all your strengths and expertise as well.