Prioritization skills are an important area of assessment when evaluating candidates. Candidates with strong prioritization skills will be able to manage deadlines, make judgment calls, and stay calm under pressure. We look at some of the best interview questions to give you a toolkit for deciphering how a candidate fares.

Prioritization Interview Questions

• What criteria do you use to prioritize projects?
• How do you ensure your daily priorities align with broader company goals?
• Can you walk me through the tools and techniques you use for prioritization of your daily, weekly, monthly project work?
• How do you balance urgent tasks with important long-term projects?
• Can you tell me about a time when you've had to prioritize tasks when directions or objectives were unclear?
• How do you handle work that is low in priority but still needs attention?
• Describe a time when you had to reprioritize quickly due to changing circumstances.
• Can you share an experience where you misprioritized tasks and how you rectified it?
• How do you determine which deadlines are flexible and which are not?
• Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a change in priorities to your team, or to a manager?
• How do you keep teammates/managers aware of your priorities?
• How do you decide how and when to delegate tasks and when to do things yourself?
• How do you handle multiple tasks with tight deadlines?
• What do you do when you feel overwhelmed by your workload?
• How do you balance the need for speed with maintaining quality in your work?
• You return to work after a two-week vacation and find fifty new emails in your inbox. How do you choose which emails to open and answer first?

General prioritization and time-management skills

Prioritization and time management go hand in hand. Strong time management skills are the foundation for balancing time-sensitive tasks with long-term projects and meeting deadlines.

Time management and prioritization interview questions:

• What criteria do you use to prioritize projects?
• How do you ensure your daily priorities align with broader company goals?
• Can you walk me through the tools and techniques you use for prioritization of your daily, weekly, monthly project work?
• How do you balance urgent tasks with important long-term projects?
• Can you tell me about a time when you've had to prioritize tasks when directions or objectives were unclear?
• How do you handle work that is low in priority but still needs attention?

What to look for in answers:

The key to effective prioritization is having a framework for evaluating the urgency and importance of tasks. In candidate answers, you'll want to dig into how the candidate strategically approaches these tradeoffs and makes decisions on when to focus on what.

It's important that candidates can get to the "why" behind projects to inform how they manage priorities. Can they effectively distinguish between urgent and important tasks, and then make a plan for achieving both? Or do they just jump onto whatever the latest "fire" is without thinking through if it actually merits their immediate attention.

Look for evidence that the candidate knows how to break down tasks into smaller sub-tasks, set realistic timelines, and assess how their responsibilities ladder up to company priorities. You want to avoid candidates who see tasks in a vacuum; instead, they should always be thinking about how their work fits into broader goals and adjusts priorities accordingly.

Adapting to changing priorities

In fast-paced, growth-oriented businesses, it's reasonable to expect that priorities are constantly shifting. It's important that employees can react to this type of dynamic environment without getting flustered or becoming unable to deliver work on the timelines required.

Questions to ask to test a candidate's ability to adapt to changing priorities:

• Describe a time when you had to reprioritize quickly due to changing circumstances.
• Can you share an experience where you misprioritized tasks and how you rectified it?
• How do you determine which deadlines are flexible and which are not?

What to look for in answers:

To understand a candidate's adaptability as it relates to prioritization, you'll want to understand that they have they have first-hand experience navigating fast-paced, ambiguous environments where priorities are in flux.

The candidate should demonstrate what their process is to seek clarity to understand what's driving changing priorities and then assess how that should affect their current areas of focus. What's their game plan when they hear about changing priorities? Do they get flustered and resist diverting from the original plan? Or do they seek to understand the context, assess how they should adjust their own work, and then spring into quick action?

By understanding a time when the candidate misprioritized a task, you can gain insight into their self-awareness and ability to learn from their past errors.

Prioritizing through communication and team work

In team settings, effectively prioritizing work goes hand-in-hand with strong communication and teamwork. This includes communicating goals and priorities to necessary stakeholders, setting clear objectives, and understanding how to resource projects to ensure successful completion.

Questions to ask:

• Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a change in priorities to your team, or to a manager?
• How do you keep teammates/managers aware of your priorities?
• How do you decide how and when to delegate tasks and when to do things yourself?

What to look for in answers:

In candidate responses, look for evidence that they know how to bring people along with their prioritization decisions. Does the candidate take the time to communicate priorities up and down the chain so that reports are clear on what they're meant to be doing and management is bought in on their areas of focus?

It's also important to understand how a potential employee thinks about what work they are best placed to take on themselves versus what makes sense to delegate to others, whether it be people on different teams or reports. Do they have a reasoned framework for making those decisions?

Handling workload and pressure effectively

Prioritization is a key component of effectively managing workload to maintain productivity and overall wellbeing. You'll want to make sure candidates know how to balance workload and maintain priorities, even in high-pressure situations.

Questions to ask:

• How do you handle multiple tasks with tight deadlines?
• What do you do when you feel overwhelmed by your workload?
• How do you balance the need for speed with maintaining quality in your work?
• You return to work after a two-week vacation and find fifty new emails in your inbox. How do you choose which emails to open and answer first?

What to look for in answers:

In responses, look for examples of how the candidate stays calm under pressure and moves into solution mode rather than panicking. Seek to understand their process for managing a heavy workload and how they think through where to focus their attention when there are competing demands for their attention. Are they able to ask for help when needed, or do they overcommit themselves and fail to deliver quality work? These are all things you'll want to tease out through your interview questions.

Summary

With these interview questions, you should be able to more effectively evaluate candidates' prioritization skills and understand how they've put them to work in real-world scenarios. By finding candidates who know how to prioritize, you'll ensure you're bringing on employees who know how to produce high-quality impact while managing deadlines, adapting to change, and maintaining calm under pressure.