Interview Questions › Behavioral

Hire and Develop the Best

Tell me about a time you raised the bar on your team, through hiring, coaching or by setting a higher standard.

Context

What the interviewer is testing: Hire and Develop the Best and Insist on the Highest Standards.

Clarifying questions to ask first

• What was the standard before?
• Who pushed back on the higher bar?
• How did quality change?

How to approach it

1. Pick one real, specific story (not a hypothetical or a summary of many)
2. Set the scene in two or three sentences, including the stakes
3. Spend most of the time on what you personally did and why
4. End with a measurable result and what you learned

Framework: STAR: Situation -> Task -> Action -> Result, with a short reflection at the end

Sample answer

• Specific standard raised
• Handled pushback
• Quality measured before and after

1. Situation: specific context, their role, and why it mattered (stakes)
2. Task: what they personally owned
3. Action: concrete steps they took, decisions and trade-offs, using "I" not "we"
4. Result: measurable outcome, plus what they learned or would do differently

Defines the old and new standard, how they introduced it, the pushback and how it was handled, and the measured improvement.

What interviewers look for

• Hire and Develop the Best
• Insist on the Highest Standards
• Leadership