What do you do if you're asked about handling crisis situations in a corporate communications job interview?

"Eu destacaria a importancia de agir rapidamente, comunicar com transparência, assumir responsabilidade e buscar solu??es eficazes para proteger a reputa??o da empresa durante uma crise."

In a job interview, when asked about handling crisis situations in Corporate Communications, highlight your strategic approach. Begin by emphasizing the importance of a swift, coordinated response that aligns with the company's values. Share examples of past experiences where you successfully managed crises, detailing your role in crafting clear, consistent messages, and how you used various channels for effective communication. Stress the significance of monitoring feedback and adjusting strategies accordingly. Mention your ability to stay calm under pressure, think critically, and collaborate with stakeholders to navigate challenges. Show your understanding of post-crisis analysis to learn and improve future responses.

The best way to manage a crisis is to prevent it from happening through proactive anti-crisis measures. Tell us exactly how you work in this direction, how you conduct scenario analysis, what policies you develop and/or update, how you train the communications team and other departments of the company, and also tell us how these activities allowed you to minimize the crisis that you encountered in practice.

Una vez que pasa la crisis, es muy tentador querer dar vuelta la página y pasar a otras tareas que se dejaron de lado para destinar todas las capacidades disponibles al servicio de la crisis. Sin embargo, es importante hacer una evaluación de lo ocurrido, los pasos que se siguieron, lo que debe repetirse y lo que no. Esto es importante para tomar los aprendizajes que correspondan y también saber qué se debe corregir para evitar que esa crisis vuelva a ocurrir.

The best crisis management strategy is to avoid the crisis altogether. How? Start by conducting a traditional SWOT analysis to identify your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, with a special emphasis on what those threats might be. Then, create a plan to head off the threats and shore up areas of weakness before they become a problem, making sure to involve others who have a stake in the most vulnerable areas of your organization. This strategy can go a long way toward preventing a bona fide crisis.

Before the interview, prepare for the questions. Summarise a mini case study in your mind (typing it helps to bring structure and memorisation). Begin with the problem, expand on your strategies and solutions, and explain the benefits of your approach. Also don't be afraid to talk about those times when the outcomes weren't so great or less than you hoped for, and talk about the lessons learned. Don't just use the time to show off how brilliant you are as a crisis manager.

If you're asked about this in an interview, if you have handled a situation like this in the past be very clear about the crisis, and the steps you took throughout to support from a communications perspective. Take into account who/what/where/when and don't forget the internal communications piece. Make sure to be clear about what the end result was for each area you were directly involved. If you don't have a real-world example, then focus on the steps you would take and what metrics you'd look to measure as outcomes.