Stress tends to be one of the most common topics in an interview. Because of this, you want to know how to effectively respond to these questions and the topic in general. Here are a few things that you want to consider when you are speaking about your ability to handle stress in the workplace when it comes to chemical jobs. 

How Do You Effectively Handle Stress In Your Personal Life?

This is one of the best ways to begin answering any stress-related questions in an interview. You want to showcase how you effectively deal with stress in your personal life. This can give the interviewer a lot of information on how you would handle the pressure and stress that builds up from the job. A good way to start is thinking about stressful situations you deal with regularly. For instance, when you drive to work and find yourself stuck in a traffic jam. Consider how the stress presents itself and how you deal with it.

– What made you stressed? 

Was it the other drivers or the situation you found yourself in?

– Were you responsible for the stressful situation? 

Could you have left home earlier? Could you have planned an alternative route? 

– How did you respond to the situation?

Did you turn on GPS with your phone to try to find a way out of the traffic jam? Did you try to calm yourself down? Did you listen to music to relax?

– If the situation happened again, how would you have handled it differently?

Figure out what you would have done differently and how you would have responded better.

Think About How Stress Helped You Grow

While stress can be negative in a lot of cases, there are also times when stress makes you grow as a person or employee. When speaking about stress, try to add a time when stress helped you push through something. “Pressure makes diamonds.” Think about a time when a stressful situation helped you break through and grow. 

Example 1

For instance, a time when the stress from an upcoming deadline helped you re-prioritize everything so you could meet the deadline to finish a project. You weren’t the best at keeping up with your to-do list. The stressful situation made you reassess how you prioritized tasks and you found a system that helped you stay on top of all of your assignments by date. This helped you better schedule your tasks so you never found yourself having to finish something last minute. When you are faced with an assignment that needs to be done, you prioritize it better.

Example 2

You started to create your schedules. You learned that you work best when you feel “in control.” Because of this, you get to structure your workflow and fit everything into a schedule. You slot everything into your schedule so you can figure out how long it’s going to take you to complete something. These work blocks help you avoid feeling too stressed because you always know when you have time to get something done. You took a stressful situation and you turned into into a way to positively enforce your organization and your time management.

Example 3

You tend to get stressed out when you don’t have enough information available. This is something that can be effectively dealt with through better communication. Whenever you start to feel stressed, you combat it by speaking with coworkers to get all of the details. That way, you can get all of the information you need to finish a project or complete a task. This helps you avoid the stress of not having enough information to finish something and it shows that you take initiative to keep the stressful situation from paralyzing you.

Example 4

You tend to get stressed out when other people are feeling stressed. You can show that you respond positively to stress in a team environment and that you would be an asset to the office because you help others deal with theirs. For instance, when you are working on a team project, you always ask your coworkers what they need to better handle the situation. If there is something you can do for your coworkers, you help them as much as possible. You want them to experience as little stress as possible because it helps you better manage your stress. 

Look For Follow-up Questions

It’s expected that you will receive some follow-up questions about stress and the examples you gave. Because of this, you want to be prepared for it. You may need to give more specifics or answer follow-up questions related to it. You may find some of the following follow-up questions get asked:

– This position is stressful. How do you handle being in stressful situations daily?

– Do you ever respond positively to stress?

– Do you feel stress helps you perform?

– Can you describe a time you responded well to stress in the workplace?