I think your answer is worded in a way that shows distrust and lack of enthusiasm. Everyone has experienced dysfunctional teams, but by saying things like "mostly negative," you're showing them a bias against teamwork. You can express the same thing by saying, "it's great working with teams of smart, motivated people, although it does depend on the people involved." Of course any interviewer worth their salt will follow up on that, because any kind of negativity is a yellow flag, and needs clarification.
Your second answer could be better phrased as, "well, we've all had the experience of working with people who don't pull their own weight, which can be a challenge to say the least, but that said, that kind of thing should be more the exception."
The conventional wisdom is that if you have five good group projects and one bad project, the problem is the group. If you have five bad projects and one good one, the problem is you. You don't want to tell them that you're the problem.
The 'conventional wisdom' you quote sounds valid in a professional environment. If your only experience of teamwork is with group projects in university then worrying that 'teamwork' equates to 'being saddled with a bunch of slackers' is entirely reasonable.
I think their answer was a very honest answer, which was a classic rookie mistake (although totally excusable since it was their first 'real' job interview). After being round the block a couple of times, we learn to add some spin to the answer, the way you did, and the interviewer sees that we can play the game, and we get hired.
Yup, classic rookie mistake. My revised answer is still honest. I do enjoy working with other people. Also, I need to work with other people to improve my skills. But I am also comfortable going off on my own for a while and working on something. My current job (flight test instrumentation) is an even mixture of both solo work and team work. The older, more experienced me knows now that I need both types of work.
You're absolutely right on all of this. Your comment summarizes what I learned after this experience. I was much younger then, and didn't understand that last point in particular. Was I stuck in groups where we had outright slugs? Of course I was, and that happens in a non-professional environment like school. There were some things I could have done then that I understand now. I did everything I knew to do at the time.
Yeah. In retrospect, I said much worse things in my interviews after college. Part of it is lack of experience like you say, but I think a lot of it is also the amount of stress you're going through at that time of your life. I find all my negative traits come out front and center when I'm under lots of stress, which ironically means the worse things are going at my current job, the harder it is to get a better one.
Your second answer could be better phrased as, "well, we've all had the experience of working with people who don't pull their own weight, which can be a challenge to say the least, but that said, that kind of thing should be more the exception."
The conventional wisdom is that if you have five good group projects and one bad project, the problem is the group. If you have five bad projects and one good one, the problem is you. You don't want to tell them that you're the problem.