Prioritising competing requests

Tell me about a time you had too many requests from different teams and had to decide what to work on.

Context

What the interviewer is testing: prioritisation with a clear rationale and communication to those who were told no.

Clarifying questions to ask first

What framework or criteria did you use?
Who did you say no to, and how did they react?
Looking back, was it the right call?

How to approach it

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

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

Sample answer

Explicit criteria tied to goals
Said no clearly and kindly
Revisited the decision with data

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

Lists the competing asks, the criteria (impact on a goal metric, effort, urgency), the decision, how they told the teams that lost out, and the outcome.

What interviewers look for

Prioritisation
Stakeholder management
Communication