For both employers and job seekers, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are more important than ever. I used to be the people manager at two startups that were growing quickly and am now the cofounder of a nationally recognized workplace inclusion strategy firm. I’ve seen firsthand how DEI questions are being used in the hiring process for all positions. Employers want a team that is as diverse as their customers and has a lot of different points of view. This will give them a competitive edge. They also need people who, no matter what the job, will help them create a welcoming and helpful environment instead of getting in the way of those efforts.
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Consumers are also starting to hold companies accountable for insensitive statements and biased blunders. Companies want employees who will represent them well and demonstrate cultural competency. Because of these goals and worries, interviewers are beginning to ask all applicants what they think about equality, diversity, and inclusion at work.
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You need to prepare for more than just the standard common interview questions. For example, if you’re looking for a job in digital marketing or customer service, you need to prepare for questions about your skills and experience in those areas. From my experience hiring people, I tell everyone who is looking for a job (no matter what position they are applying for) to expect questions about diversity and inclusion during the interview.
To help you get hired by an inclusive company, I’ve put together this list of DEI questions you might be asked, along with tips on how to answer them and sample answers to help you write your own.
Relationship skills are a crucial part of any job. Whether it’s working collaboratively with colleagues, building rapport with clients, or resolving conflicts, your ability to connect with others is often the make-or-break factor for career success. Fortunately, you can prepare for relationship-focused interview questions by understanding what employers want to learn about you and practicing thoughtful responses.
Why Relationship Skills Matter
In today’s collaborative work environment, virtually no role is isolated. Most jobs require interfacing with co-workers, managers, direct reports, clients, vendors, or other stakeholders. Employers need people who can
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Build trust and credibility
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Influence without authority
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Manage disagreement and negotiate win-win solutions
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Adapt communication styles to different personalities and situations
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Listen first, then respond appropriately
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Give and receive feedback constructively
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Motivate and inspire others
When your work involves interacting with people, emotional intelligence, empathy, and social awareness are just as vital as hard skills. Regardless of your field or position, expect interviewers to explore your relationship competencies.
Common Questions and Why They’re Asked
Here are some typical relationship-based interview questions and the qualities employers want to uncover:
How do you go about building rapport with new colleagues or clients?
This reveals your ability to connect with different types of people, establish trust quickly, and make others feel comfortable.
Tell me about a time you persuaded someone to see things your way. How did you influence them?
This uncovers your powers of diplomacy, negotiation, and getting buy-in without formal authority. It also tests your emotional intelligence in sizing up different motivations.
Describe a situation where you had to resolve a difficult conflict. What was your approach?
This investigates your conflict management style, empathy, and problem-solving under pressure. It shows how you balance assertiveness with flexibility to defuse tension.
How do you handle critical feedback from a supervisor or peer? How have you implemented it?
This evaluates your openness to improvement and accountability. It demonstrates humility, professional growth, and translating feedback into positive change.
Tell me about a time you successfully balanced the interests of multiple stakeholders. How did you determine priorities?
This reveals your analytical skills in reconciling competing needs, discovering mutual goals, and maintaining collaborative relationships.
How would you go about influencing a resistant colleague to support your idea or initiative?
This tests your persuasion approach, ability to see others’ perspectives, and gain cooperation through mutual understanding.
What strategies do you use to foster trust and credibility with new clients or team members?
This shows your self-awareness and intentionality in forming connections. It highlights reliability, integrity, and investing in relationships.
How do you typically deal with interpersonal conflict in the workplace? Provide a specific example.
This investigates your conflict resolution process and focuses on understanding over finger-pointing. It emphasizes restoring relationships.
Describe a time you had to adapt your communication style to better suit a particular audience. What adjustments did you make?
This reveals flexibility, social awareness, and audience analysis skills. It spotlights fine-tuning your approach to resonate with different people.
Smart Ways to Answer Relationship Interview Questions
Here are some tips for showcasing your people skills during relationship-focused interview questions:
1. Pick relevant examples. Choose anecdotes that cleanly match the specific question. If asked about persuading others, don’t tell a story about resolving team conflicts. Select examples that let your relationship abilities shine.
2. Focus on action steps. Don’t just describe the situation. Walk through exactly how you handled it – your listening approach, influencing style, negotiation process, or other relevant steps. Prove the “how” behind your people skills.
3. Demonstrate self-awareness. Explain your rationale for why you chose certain approaches or adapted your style. Share thought processes like, “I sensed this person needed more time to vent before discussing solutions.” Show your emotional intelligence.
4. Spotlight results. Discuss the positive end results of how you handled the situation, not just the actions you took. For example, “This built greater cohesion between departments.” Quantify or qualify outcomes when possible.
5. Own shortcomings. If applicable, briefly explain lessons you learned or anything you’d do differently next time. This shows maturity, self-reflection, and commitment to growth.
6. Stay positive. Even when discussing conflicts, criticize the issue not the person. Keep examples focused on overcoming challenges to build relationships.
Practicing Your STAR Response
Using the STAR method can help you craft well-structured responses to behavioral interview questions about relationships:
Situation – Set up the context briefly. Who was involved, what was the relationship, and what challenge did you face?
Task – What were you trying to achieve? Was it persuading, negotiating, resolving conflict, gaining trust, etc.? Define the goal.
Action – Explain the steps you took to address the situation and pursue your goal. This is the meat of your response. Zoom in on relevant relationship/people skills you leveraged.
Result – What was the outcome thanks to your actions? Tie it back to how you successfully built rapport, persuaded, increased harmony, etc.
Here’s an example using the STAR approach to answer the “balancing stakeholders” question:
S – As project manager, I had to oversee launching a new mobile app. The sales team wanted to fast-track the rollout, while the user experience designers advocated more testing.
T – My goal was satisfying both teams by understanding their perspectives and finding workable compromises.
A – I had individual conversations first to learn each group’s priorities and constraints. I uncovered their underlying interests. I then brought them together to map out a phased launch plan that addressed both timelines and quality.
R – This achieved buy-in across both teams by giving each side key elements they wanted. The gradual rollout satisfied UX and speeded market access for sales.
Questions You Can Ask Employers
Relationship skills are clearly important. Make sure the job aligns with your values by asking a few culture questions of your own:
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How would you describe the work style and personalities on this team?
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What qualities do you feel are most important for thriving in your company culture?
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How are disagreements and conflicts typically resolved here?
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How do you foster collaboration between departments or teams?
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What kind of training or mentoring supports employee growth and development?
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How does leadership solicit and act upon feedback from employees?
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How are high performers recognized or rewarded at your company?
The answers will provide insight into the relationship environment you could be joining.
Key Takeaways
Mastering people skills is imperative for career advancement. Expect interviewers to probe your ability to persuade, collaborate, resolve conflict, earn trust, and influence outcomes. Prepare STAR examples that showcase your relationship competencies in action. Ask culture questions to determine if the environment aligns with your values. With practice and an interpersonal focus, you can tackle relationship interview questions with confidence.
How Would You Handle a Situation Where a Colleague Was Being Culturally Insensitive, Sexist, Racist, or Homophobic?
Employers want to know how active you’ll be in creating an inclusive environment. It is not enough that you won’t make insensitive remarks yourself. Most companies are looking for employees who will actively stand up against biased remarks and actions.
In answering this question, you’ll want to demonstrate your willingness to take action. Your interviewer wants to know that you won’t just stand by if something sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise wrong happens. Likewise, they’ll want to see that you won’t overstep or ignore company protocol in your response.
Now is a good time to share a personal story if you’ve been through something similar before, either at work or somewhere else. If not, you can give an answer that describes what you would do if you saw the situation happen and what you would do if you heard about it later.
You could say something like:
“If the incident is happening, I think it’s my job to stop the bias, no matter who is saying or doing something insensitive.” I want to make it clear that the hurtful comment or action does not reflect the values of the company or my own, and I want it to stop. I might say, ‘We don’t talk like that around here. Please don’t say that around me again. I would tell the company’s human resources team about an incident I heard about from someone else so they are aware of it and can handle it according to the company’s anti-discrimination policies. ”.
In Your Opinion, What Is the Most Challenging Aspect of Working in a Diverse Environment?
Hiring managers ask this question to see if you can give an answer that shows you understand the problems that can come up in diverse settings and are confident you can handle them in the right way. You can talk about a relevant experience if you have one, but keep in mind that the interviewer is not giving you a chance to vent.
This question can trip candidates up. You don’t want to say something stupid or go on and on about a time when it was hard to get along with a coworker of a different religion or gender. When you’re coming up with an answer to this question, go beyond just answering it at face value. You should go into more detail to show that you not only understand some of the problems, but also have thought about how to solve them. Most importantly, keep your answer positive.
That might sound like:
“Diverse teams drive innovative solutions precisely because they can be challenging. When you include different points of view, you not only get more ideas, but also more people who point out problems with those ideas. The debate that can come with differing perspectives pushes everyone to think and work harder. This is one of the hardest things about working in a diverse space, but I’m up for the challenge. Because of this, if I see that we have a pretty good solution but haven’t heard from someone on the team, I’ll ask them to give their opinion on it. It’s often the case that bringing someone into the conversation makes us talk about an issue for longer, but it also leads to a better solution. ”.
