Speaker 1: How do you prioritize your work? This question doesn't always come up in a job interview, but when it does, it is really important that you have a strong answer, because being able to manage your time and prioritize your work is an essential skill, regardless of what job you have. When an interviewer asks you this question, you need to be able to demonstrate these abilities. If you can't, don't expect the potential employee to consider you as a strong candidate for their position. So today I'll share with you how you give a strong answer to the question, how do you prioritize your work? First of all, let's talk about what it means to be strong in prioritizing your work. It means that you have a thorough process for organizing your work tasks, all of them. It could be that you're using a fancy technical system to track this, but it doesn't have to be. A to-do list in Excel, in a journal, or on paper works just fine. It doesn't matter what you use to keep track of your work task, what matters is that you are keeping track of it somehow, and that the method is effective for you. Being strong in prioritizing your work also means having a methodology for determining what tasks are urgent and what tasks are important. These are not the same thing. Almost all of the activities at work are important, but not all of them are time sensitive, and you need to be able to demonstrate that you can make this distinction for every work task. You also need to have a way of avoiding distractions and having flexibility in your schedule, so that you're able to still produce high quality work, even under time pressure. Like in a situation where your manager tells you, this has to be done today, and you then need to be able to deliver on time and with quality, despite having a full schedule already. So when you're asked this question in a job interview, these are the things that the interviewer is looking to understand. Do you have a method for keeping track of your work tasks? How do you determine what's urgent and what's important? How do you ensure the work gets done on time and with quality? And what is your approach for handling unscheduled tasks? With all this in mind, here's an example what a strong answer can sound like when you're asked, how do you prioritize your work? I have a very strict action list that I follow for planning my work. This list consists of routine activities, project tasks, and one-off tasks. I schedule production time in my calendar, and to the extent it's possible, I keep these time slots. Of course, there may be meetings that come up, which I need to attend at a time slot which was originally scheduled as production time. But because I have it blocked off in my calendar, it doesn't happen too often. When I'm asked to work on an activity, I always make sure to have a clear understanding of the deadline. I then put my own deadline to be at least a day earlier, and longer if I can. Because I do this with all the activities I have on my plate, I have a time buffer in case anything unexpected comes up that needs to be done right now. I've prioritized my day, so I handle the must-get-done-today task as early in the day as possible. So for example, if I have a delivery deadline that day, I make sure that this task is done first, and that's how I prioritize my work, and I have done so for years. This is a strong answer, because you explain how you prioritize in a clear and concise way, and it talks about all the elements the interviewer wants to get a better understanding on. And there you have it. Now you know how to give a strong answer to the question, how do you prioritize your work, in your next job interview. My name is Petra Peiris and I'm a career strategist, a coach and the founder of TheCareerUpgrade.com. I help professionals like you to land the job you want, build a career you deserve and make the money you're worth. If you're new to my channel, consider hitting the subscribe button and turn on the notification so you get notified whenever I post a new video. I hope you found this video useful, please give it a thumbs up if you did. If you know someone who may benefit from watching this video, make sure to share it with them, and let me know in the comment what method you have in place for prioritizing your work. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.