I received a really interesting question from a commenter who wanted to know how to handle a specific type of element in an interview process. Let’s say the interview is evaluating you on four elements A, B, C and D, with perhaps D being communications. In a traditional interview process, and the default of most managers, they’ll ask you three questions:

1. About Element A
2. About Element B
3. About Element C

And then they’ll grade D for communications on how you did across all three questions. Sometimes they’ll give you a question and evaluate your Comms only on that question, but most do a global score for Comms.

But today’s question is about what to do if the interview combines A & B together into one question for the interview.

A small digression on Elements

Let me first say that a combination of elements can happen at any stage of a process or even ahead in a poster.

For example, in a traditional poster, “Ability to work with others” is a frequent and popular “Ability element” (perhaps A above). Equally, “Interpersonal relations” might be a “Personal Suitability” element (perhaps C above). And just for fun, let’s say that B was another Personal Suitability element listed as “Initiative”.

Three elements, listed separately. But the poster could have merged some of those into one point:

• Ability to work with others (A)
• Initiative and interpersonal relations (B&C)

When I have talked about preparations in my guide, I have always gone with the basic post where A, B, and C were listed separately. Today’s question is what do you do when they’re merged?

Three types of linked elements

There are three ways for items to be linked together, and they depend on how the items relate to each other. What matters is that for some reason, the hiring manager has decided to merge them for the purposes of evaluation. And, having been on both sides of the desk, I can tell you it is one of the hardest type of questions to answer. Hence why HR often suggests separating them for ease of evaluation.

A. No alignment (2 components)

The first combination would be like if the hiring manager decided to merge “Ability to work with others” with “Ability to set priorities”. If you went through your headings for working with others and your headings for the ability to set priorities, there are likely to be NO common elements. It’s like two elements launched as fireworks, one to the left and the other to the right. They had the same origin, but nothing really linking them.

So, you’re going to have to give almost a two-part answer. Let’s say you look at working with others, and come up with three headings. In your answer, you’re likely to go through it A1, A2, A3 and then B1, B2, B3. They may not connect or overlap at all. If this is the case, you need to make sure that you are covering ALL of the elements for both, almost like you got two questions. It’ll be hard to stay within your time allotment, but the approach is relatively easy.

B. Parallel components (1.5 components)

If the two components are something like “Working with others” and “interpersonal relations”, the two pieces are very similar. If you go through your break-down of headings for each component, let’s say into A1, A2, A3 and B1, B2, B3, then you’re likely to find that A1 and B1 are same, maybe A2 and B3 are almost the same, and A3 and B2 are a bit unique. So for your answer, you might go with A1/B1, A2/B3, A3, B2 for your structure.

In other words, you’re going to give a fully integrated answer that combines and interweaves the components together. It’s almost like you have 1.5 components instead of two separate ones. But the challenge is still relatively low.

C. Intersection (1+ component)

I mentioned that the hiring manager might combine elements in the poster, before you even get to the interview stage. The example from the commenter had an element that says: Ability to work effectively with others (A) and with minimal supervision (B)

They literally have no elements in common. If you broke it out for your answer, it would be A1, A2, A3, and B1, B2, B3, exactly like example A above (no alignment). But the manager has said in the poster that they think it intersects.

In this instance, then, you need to find a way to tell that story as if they DID intersect. For example, let’s say that you have:

A1 = Transparency
A2 = Respect for others
A3 = Informal Communications
B1 = Initiative
B2 = Collaboration
B3 = Judgment

If you have to combine them, A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, then the first example above may work, but not as well as if you integrate them.

However, if you think of it as actually “intersecting”, what if you said to yourself, if I was going to be working with others with minimal supervision, I might want to know what others were doing, stay in touch with them regularly, help each other stay on track, etc. As such, my answer might look like:

• B2 = Collaboration
  • A1 = Transparency
  • A2 = Respect for others
• B1 = Initiative
  • A3 = Informal Communications
• B3 = Judgment

In this example, I’ve decided that when they intersect, working with minimal supervision was of a higher level than working with others, and I could more easily integrate A1,2,3 under B than I could the reverse.

Of course, it depends on the question they ask. If the question is open, you can decide which structure you want to use. If it is more pointed about minimal supervision, the structure above is good. If it was more pointedly about working with others, you might go the opposite way:

• A1 = Transparency
  • B3 = Judgement
• A2 = Respect for Others
  • B1 = Initiative
• A3 = Informal Communications
  • B2 = Collaboration

Conclusion

As I mentioned above, many hiring managers do NOT merge elements. While HR people advise measuring any important element more than once, it can get messy for evaluation if you merge it with multiple headings. EX level interviews are notorious for this. Picture a structure like this:

Question 1: xxxxx
Evaluating: Creating Vision and Strategy, Mobilize People, Uphold Integrity and Respect
Question 2: xxxxx
Evaluating: Mobilize People, Collaborate with Partners and Stakeholders, Achieve Results
Question 3: xxxxx
Evaluating: Creating Vision and Strategy, Promote Innovation and Guide Change

CVS + MP show up twice, the rest are marked once each. But Question 2 is likely going to be hard where you have to talk about where you mobilized people in collaboration with partners and stakeholders to achieve results. If you take the traditional approach for non-alignment, you would end up with A1,A2,A3,B1,B2,B3, C1,C2,C3 but for time, you might have to drop A3, B3, and C3. So shorter bullets on each. Which is a really good way to MISS an element in your answer or have it be only lightly covered.

In an ideal answer, your best option would be to treat it like all three are parallel and just variations of the same headings. And then you give a fully integrated answer for all three. It’s really hard to do well.

In a traditional answer, you can go with the non-aligned answer and just treat it like two separate elements.