While many firms are known for asking ‘hypothetical’, ‘situational judgment‘-type questions at Assessment Centre stage, some firms may also ask these questions during the written application stage. For those unfamiliar, here is an example of this question type:
You are a trainee in STRIVE LLP’s Corporate Department. Your supervisor has been working on a piece of research for a prospective client with the matter partner (and you have had minimal involvement in the matter so far), but your supervisor called you this morning to let you know that she is ill and therefore will take leave today. She will not be contactable for the rest of the day. The matter partner calls you and asks for a summary note of the research your supervisor has done by COB today, which is intended to be sent to the prospective client. The partner stresses that this is urgent as STRIVE LLP would like to be retained by the prospective client for future work. In the meantime, you have received emails from two other associates who have asked you for updates on matters you have not yet started. How would you react?
From our experience, we see that students struggle with these questions for four main reasons:
They are lulled into a false sense of security that these questions are more ‘freehand’, and therefore they throw structure out of the window;
They do not effectively use the facts provided by the question. For example, the question specifically mentioned Corporate, COB today, the fact that your supervisor has already previously worked on the deal (which means you rather than redoing the research on your own you should look on file to see what has already been done, rather than duplicating work), the fact that the research note is ultimately meant to be sent to the client etc for a reason.
Perhaps as a direct result of Point 2 above, students tend to waffle and talk about points that could have applied to any situation, rather than this specific situation (e.g. “I would feel excited about this task”, “I would speak to other people who have already done something similar and learn from them”, “I would send a capacity email to other trainees and, with the consent of the matter associates, hand over my other tasks to trainees who are willing to help“ etc). While these points (such as giving tasks to other trainees) are valuable to an extent, and so they do need to be addressed, you will unfortunately not stand out by staying only on that level.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they fall into the trap of believing that, because the question is hypothetical, their answer can also stay at the hypothetical level - but if you want to stand out, this won’t be enough! Instead, for every claim you make (i.e. claiming you would do XYZ in the hypothetical scenario), you should back it up with similar scenarios from your own work experience where you have actually done what you claim you would do. That being said, you must also be mindful of spending so much of your answer talking about your past experiences that you are straying too far from answering the actual question. Striking the balance could be tricky - please see the following template to see that this part should be no longer than 1-2 sentences at the end of each paragraph.
Taking all of these factors into account, please consult the following formula/template.
In order to deliver all of these tasks effectively, I would undertake three action steps.
Firstly, I would prioritise quickly responding to chaser emails from matter associates by explaining that an urgent business development task for a priority prospective client has arisen from a partner, and whether there can therefore be any flexibility with the deadline on delivering their tasks. If so, I would thank them and provide an updated estimate of when this work would be completed. If not, I would ask for consent from the associate to send out a capacity email to other trainees who might be happy to cover me. When confronted with a similar situation at ABC Ltd as an intern, where a senior manager had tasked me with an urgent matter which meant I had to postpone other commitments from my supervisor. I handled this situation by a mixture of explaining to my supervisor the urgency of my task at hand, requesting for deadline extensions and delegating tasks to other members of the team.
Secondly, given that my supervisor has already started carrying out the research, I would look on file for draft research memos or email exchanges to ascertain and build on the extent of work already done. When faced with a similar situation during my work experience week at EVIRTS LLP, … (and so on)
Thirdly, ….
You can see from the sample response above that each of the four points above have been addressed. Especially in relation to the last point, you can see that the part where you mention your past experience to back up your claim should be no longer than 1-2 sentences at the end of each paragraph.
