Ability #5 of 10
The Ability to Organize/Prioritize
Attracting and retaining great employees BEGINS with interviewing well. There are 10 abilities we believe every organization in every industry should be seeking out in their future employees. Today we're discussing how to discover an employee's ability to organize and prioritize their work.
3 Reasons the Ability to Organize/Prioritize Matters
Time Is a Skill Learned During Childhood: Many younger Millennial and Gen Z employees never had the experience of needing to be home “when the streetlights came on.” As that kind of independent deadline-management faded from childhood, so did a key life skill — which now shows up as time-blindness in the workplace. Time management deserves a real place in new-hire onboarding, and it's worth checking in interviews what systems candidates already use to manage their own time.
Organized Chaos: More young adults are recognizing traits of ADD/ADHD that went undiagnosed in childhood. Kristin isn't a specialist in that space (though she was diagnosed with ADD in 1991) — but her point stands: some employees who look like “chaos personified” simply haven't been given tools to organize. Sometimes all it takes is a concrete system, consistently modeled, for someone to build the skill from scratch.
Make Them Show You How They Prioritize — in the Interview: Have candidates demonstrate the skill directly: list the steps required for a task they'd actually do in the role, jumble the order, and have them put the steps back in order while explaining their choices. Follow up with questions to see how they respond to correction.
2 Tips for HR Professionals
Training, Training, Training: Don't assume a degree — or even a 4.0 GPA — means someone can manage their time effectively. Some of the most capable students got there by procrastinating until they had no choice but to cut corners. Time management and efficiency training is worth the investment for every employee.
Model What You Want: One of the best ways to teach is to model the behavior you want. If time management is a skill you want your team to sharpen, work on your own first — people notice, and inconsistency (saying one thing, doing another) undercuts the message fast.
Ask the Right Questions: 10 Interview Questions
- When you have a lot to accomplish over the course of a day, what strategies help you get it all done?
- When you hear the term “organized” at work, what does that mean to you?
- Do you prefer controlled chaos — where you know where everything is but others may not — or a strict system where everything has its place? How has that worked for you?
- Tell me about a time you had to work with someone who lacked organizational skills. How did you handle task completion?
- You have a tight deadline, and your manager hands you another task with a quick turnaround. How do you prioritize?
- What makes something a “priority” in your mind?
- Time management is one of the hardest skills in a busy workplace — what resources would you explore to improve your own, and pass them along to others?
- Some projects take months or years to reach completion. How do you stay motivated when a project lacks closure?
- Sometimes the company mission overtakes a department's mission. How do you handle having to switch gears quickly?
- What do you do when your priorities and your manager's priorities differ?
That's a wrap on Ability #5! Remember, time management isn't something everyone magically knows how to do. Sometimes the difference between chaos and productivity is simply having the right tools and someone willing to teach them.
Next week, we're tackling Ability #6 of The 10 Abilities. Stay tuned!
Talk soon,
Kristin
