What do you do in an employment interview when they hit you with an impossible question about your process and plan for your first 40 days on the job?

This exact scenario played out for one of my colleagues last week. It inspired me to share a simple technique for scenario-based questions. It’s called the scientific method. Technically this method involves seven steps, but you can boil it down to four and it works perfectly.

It does not matter what the job entails. You could be interviewing to become a business developer or a software engineer. The logical structure of the scientific method will work no matter what career you are pursuing.

Interview Question: What is your process and plan for your first 40 days on the job?

Step One: Observe and Question

Start your answer by indicating that your first 10 days on the job would focus on noticing what is working and what could be better. You plan to ask lots of questions and be open to learning everything you can. Gathering information, building relationships, and earning trust will be key to the initiation of the plan.

Step Two: Generate a Range of Solutions and Possibilities

In the next 10 days, you will be developing ideas/strategies/solutions based on what you learned in the first 10 days. This is a creative process where you hope to offer new eyes and new perspectives. You will share your ideas with colleagues and management as appropriate, narrowing down the possibilities and selecting your initial approach. You will set measurable goals and set the foundation for future evaluation.

Step Three: Experiment and Implement

After 20 days on the job, you will be ready to select a specific strategy and implement it. You will utilize all the resources at your disposal. You describe an approach and explain the steps you would take. Hopefully, you know enough about the opportunity you are interviewing for, allowing for customization of your answer to the employer's needs.

Step Four: Evaluation and Adjustments/Conclusions

The last stage of your 40-day plan is an analysis of what went well and what could have been done better. You will solicit input from stakeholders and customers, measuring your achievements against the goals you initially set. You might finish this with a comment about your commitment to continuous learning and improvement.

Here is the bottom line. The interview panel does not expect you to know every detail of a job you’ve never done. But they want to know you understand the bones of a logical process.

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