Hi everyone, very new to this and wondered if someone might be able to help. Massively stressed about submitting my application for Hogan Lovells (hence my delay).
I am struggling with the second question ‘we set our standards high, and we trust our people to hold themselves accountable for meeting other peoples expectations. Describe a time when you had to drop everything and really “raise your game” in order to keep a promise you had made to someone else. How did you manage both this and your other commitments?’
If anyone has any guidance it would be greatly appreciated! I have already answered this, but feel I’m probably on the wrong track.
Hi Bethany,
As others have mentioned, this question is testing you across a few skillsets to see whether you have key attributes. In this question, the key attributes being pinpointed are mainly time management, prioritising skills, and work ethic. It's also, though, testing how you would react to something unforeseen- i.e., how well you react to a change of plan and what you do to manage that.
First of all, if we remove the 'Grad Rec' speak, this question is asking you:
"Tell us about a time where something unforeseen interrupted your existing plans/ schedule. How did you manage the situation and what did you do to try and ensure that all your commitments were met?"
Typically, the major points which you need to hit are:
- you communicated the issue to the relevant people, e.g.:
"After assessing my capacity and realising that I would struggle to complete everything for the given deadlines, I consulted both seniors who had appointed me work to inform them that, as well as what they had given me, I also had workload for another senior. I asked whether either set of work was flexible with respect to its deadline."
- you sought to clarify whether it was possible to delegate (and subsequently delegated where possible)
"I asked around my colleagues to assess their capacity, I then sought clarification from my senior whether it was suitable for me to delegate certain components of the task" (The reason I mention this second part is that, sometimes, especially in a law firm, certain people may be prevented from working on certain tasks with certain clients, e.g. due to conflicts of interest).
- You carried out a further assessment of your workload, analysing what tasks would take you the longest/ shortest amount of time, what was the most imminent, whether you had any peripheral commitments whose deadlines were flexible or were less urgent to streamline your workload as much as possible.
- You worked additional hours for the busy period to ensure that all the work was completed on time to a high standard.
The STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Response/ Result) format is what I tended to stick to for questions such as these.
Hopefully this helps, very best of luck with your app!
