Assuming they're not just reading it from a checklist & tuning out when you start talking - they're looking for a story where you had a problematic relationship with a coworker or coworkers, but managed to make it work. Ideally over a longer period of time, and not "Bob stole my lunch out of the fridge one day". For reasons similar to what you said I've found a lot of people don't have very good stories along these lines, and because of that this question is less useful than people like to think. And on top of that, most candidates are terrified of saying anything that makes them look like the ahole in those situations. So if their answer sounds pretty milquetoast who is to say if they're being careful or just don't have good stories.

I have a story I use now. It involved a coworker with whom I had an oil vs water relationship for a couple of years. In retrospect I could have gone about it all a lot better than I did in the moment, although that was true for both of us. I don't have the perfect "And then I solved everything" punchline to my story, they were eventually let go. But, my journey during it all was critical to my own development. And that started me down a leadership path, changing the course of my career. So I talk about my lessons learned, things I wish I'd have done differently in retrospect, etc. I'm not painting a perfect picture of myself, but I do display introspection, personal development, willingness to take different approaches to resolve an issue, etc.

The oil vs water thing resonates. Given that tenures are relatively short these days (1-2 years), it's pretty easy to just wait it out -- especially if the other person has issues with other people too.

I do feel like too many of my examples (for this whole class of questions) are times I could've handled better (though I didn't handle them catastrophically by any means), that ultimately shaped how I think about such things going forwards (after a fair amount of introspection)). But I often seem to lack the examples of a subsequent situation where I put that into practice (pandemic meant I basically took a holding-pattern role for a couple of years).

One would think that introspection, recognition of ones own mistakes and being receptive to feedback would be a massive pro; but lately that hasn't been my experience when interviewing.

I'm with you on this.

I've even been told that my lack of a good answer to this question was the only negative mark on one of the interviews for a job that I eventually was hired for.

My honest answer is that I don't generally have conflicts at work. I get along with people and generally handle disagreements easily. I haven't worked in an environment that was rife with conflicts, maybe I'm just lucky or maybe my definition of conflict is different than others.

"I'm really good at predicting potential areas of conflict with my coworkers so I make sure to address them head-on before they turn into something much bigger. This is why I've managed to avoid any major sources of conflict so far (knock on wood). An example of this was..."

I've been asked this numerous times, and similar questions. Most of these questions boil down to "are you, the interviewee we are about to give a job to, a crazy person". Most likely you are not, so find some plausible scenarios, like a missed deadline, scope creep, or any of the normal shit that happens to us, humanize the other in the story, state the resolution (or what you changed in process), the end.

If someone asks me this I tell them about the time when I was working late and another engineer who happened to work a few desks away from mine broke our unit tests and tried to pressure me into committing a quick patch to fix them without testing it first so they wouldn't be late to a movie.

I explained I was new to the group, had no special understanding of the code they changed or the tests that failed and wasn't about to deviate from SDLC principles when there wasn't a compelling need. In my view committing an untested change was what caused the trouble in the first place and I had no confidence that the fix they wanted me to commit would make things better. I suggested that they simply revert their change and come back to it later when they had time.

This only made the other person more irritated. They raised their voice and continued to demand I do what they suggested and I continued to politely explain that while I was willing to help them work through the problem, review their code, examine the data or follow any appropriately documented procedure, I wasn't willing to violate proper engineering principles this way. Their shouting started attracting some unwanted attention and they decided to just pack up and leave. Later that evening another engineer reverted their change and everything was fine again.

My manager asked me how I felt about the incident the next day. I said that although their behavior was irritating, I didn't hold it against them. Even the best of people make mistakes when desperate or rushed. Their mind just wasn't in the right place at that time. They really just needed to get away for a bit. What matters is that we move on, try our best to treat each other with respect and remember that we're all part of the same team.

If the question feels unclear to you, that’s an excellent opportunity to ask clarifying questions, e.g. “Sure, but what do you mean by ‘conflict’? Do you mean a disagreement on how to solve a problem, or an interpersonal conflict?”

When I ask a question like this I mean a disagreement, and I’d imagine that’s what most interviewers mean too. So I recommend you continue to search for a situation you can recall in detail.

If the answer is that they’re looking for interpersonal conflict, you should use a situation where you took effort to work past it with the person for the good of the mission/company. Your last story could work if framed that way but it lacks a moment where you found a way to move forward with this person.

> So I recommend you continue to search for a situation you can recall in detail.

Or just make one up. Ask silly questions, get silly answers.

This is really what I'd guess a lot of people do. Nobody is going to go back and verify that the "conflict" actually happened.

All these interview questions just boil down to "can you carry on a coherent conversation and do you project a pleasant and social disposition" or even more simply stated, that you "are likable."

I don't care what your technical abilities are, if you are weird or fidgity or sweaty or can't make eye contact you are going to have a lot more difficulty getting hired. At least in the places I've worked. Work on your personality and your abilty to hold a conversation. The details don't really matter.

I don’t think it’s enough to be likeable. That, and “personable” are common words used to describe me, but this particular interview round (eg behavioural questions) are still where I’m most likely to fail a process these days.

Feedback is usually “everyone really liked you, but we had some concerns related to…”. I really do think you need a prepared bank of stories/examples, because otherwise your memories will be biased towards the most emotionally charged examples, which are rarely the ones where you come off looking good — even if you can show self-reflection and subsequent growth.

I agree. You need to have prepared stories for the standard questions, and you need to be able to convincingly bullshit on questions you didn't prepare for.

Just make something up. Or take a real incident and change the details a bit.

Is it better to learn something from the conflict yourself or is it better to help someone else learn something? Come up with different versions and A/B test them to see what kind of reaction you get.

Isn’t this what everyone does in interviews? If not, why not? It’s a storytelling game to get a job offer, not a deposition. I interview a lot of people and hope they’re telling me stories that are partially untrue.

Unfortunately, I’m not good at making things up or embellishing the truth. I’m far more inclined to downplay something than exaggerate.

I’m literally someone who took an inch off my height on my dating app profiles because I have slightly bad posture and didn’t want to misrepresent myself.

Are you not good at them or do you refuse to do them? Or both?

Both. I think knowingly misleading people (or allowing them to be misled by omitting key information) is wrong. There are exceptions, but I’m more strict on this than most appear be.

As a result, I don’t have a lot of practice at it, and the very act makes me feel incredibly anxious.

Well these are skills you can develop if you like.

And remember that the interview process is a game of hiding information from the other player. You would likely never tell an interviewer about the worst thing you’ve done in your professional life just like the interviewer will likely never tell you about the ways the company has fucked over previous employees.

Conflict means disagreement. They want to be able to see that you can disagree with someone or handle conflict with someone but not make it personal and move on professionally.

So you disagreed over something technical, like architecture. You show they you can handle conflict by not taking it personally, but involving other people on the team, and regardless of whether or not the outcome is in your favor, you thrash it out once and then stick to it.

I'm a manager whose definition of conflict mostly matches yours, so here's how I handle it (as an interviewee) and how to translate the "default behavioral interview question" to something you can answer:

- the scope of the question is usually "how do you reconcile your worldview, desires, and best interest with someone else's". When answering, I tend to first clarify to the interview that "conflict" is a word that has intense connotations for me, and then ask "Are you asking about a time I had to negotiate with a person that was coming from a different point of view or background, or about how I handled an emotionally charged situation?" (As a manager, it is more common that I do get asked about emotionally charged situations, which also take skills to defuse, just different ones.)

- At least for me, I often think of non-emotionally-charged disagreements as negotiations; there are absolutely negotiation skills to be used to resolve disagreements efficiently and effectively, and if you can't think of any, it may be something for you to practice. Do you often get what you want? When you do, is it mutually beneficial? How does that course of action happen?

- Sometimes you can sidestep the question and showcase better conflict resolution skills by thinking of a time you arbitraged a conflict between two other parties. Describe how you dealt with each party. Did you feel you were unbiased? If you were initially more on the side of one party, how did you set that aside to listen to the other person?

- Don't mention abuses of power (by you or the other party) in a conflict resolution question. Also don't mention conflicts that are primarily personal - the origin of the disagreement should be about work, not tone, physical threats, intimate history, etc.

- If you do have a story about building a working relationship with a known problematic person, so that your work with that person yielded good results and you didn't fall into the trap of a bad personal relationship with them, you can mention what you did to get there. E.g. "X was widely known for his temper and would often yell during code reviews. Although this caused problems with all his teams, and he doesn't work there anymore today, I always got civil, useful code reviews from X by sending him my points in writing in advance, and expressing that I valued his feedback which was why I wanted a trace of it."