Answer the problem-project question with a real loss, told in four moves: the job and its size, what went wrong in dollars and weeks, the one decision that was yours, and the practice you changed. Name no person, owner or former employer, and keep settlement terms and open disputes out of it.
“Tell me about a job that went wrong.” Then the interviewer stops talking, and so do you. In that silence most candidates run a fast search for the mildest failure they own: the school that finished nine days late, the subcontractor who went quiet for a week before it all worked out. The president asking has a real one of his own in mind, the kind with a lawyer in it, and he is waiting to hear whether yours is the same species. At a senior level this is the one question in a construction interview that he already knows the answer to. What he does not know yet is how you tell it.
What is a construction interview testing with the problem-project question?
Whether you can describe a loss accurately, own your share of it and show what changed afterward, all without naming a villain. The interviewer assumes you have run a bad job. He is finding out what kind of witness you would be to one of his.
Everyone who has carried enough work has a job that lost money, finished late or ended in a claim. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists budgets and schedules among a construction manager’s duties in its occupational profile, and a seat that answers for both will eventually miss one. So a candidate with twenty years and no losses has been lucky, been shielded or is editing, and none of the three reassures the person hiring. If that job is also why you stepped away from contracting, expect both questions in the same interview; rejoining the industry covers the half about why you left.
He is also listening for something personal. A private contractor’s owner has often given a personal indemnity for the firm’s bonds, and the SBA’s page on surety bonds sets out what a bond guarantees to a project owner. A job that goes badly is his exposure. He wants a leader who will tell him early, in numbers, while there is still time to act. Your answer is the only sample he gets.
Choosing a mild job fails the test before you finish the first sentence. Pick the real one.
How do you structure the answer in a construction interview?
In four moves and about three minutes: the job in one sentence with its size, what went wrong in dollars and weeks, the decision that was yours, and the practice you changed. Spend the longest on the third. When you reach the end of the fourth, stop talking.
Our guide to interview preparation covers the shape of this answer in brief. The detail that separates a good version from an adequate one is the arithmetic, so here is a worked example of an answer, with invented figures.
“It was a $50 million hospital addition in Atlanta, CM at risk. My team carried a fee of $2,000,000 at GMP and closed with $750,000, which gave back $1,250,000, and the job finished eleven weeks late. The drawings were about 70 percent complete at GMP and I accepted allowances for the imaging suite that I believed were light. Then I let changes proceed on verbal direction for four months because the relationship was good. By the time they were priced, the owner disputed half. Now no changed work starts without written direction, and pending change exposure goes in my monthly forecast from the first dollar.”
That answer runs under two minutes. It names no person and no company, it blames no one, and every figure in it could be checked against a cost report. The interviewer now knows what you would do on his job in month three.
| Weak answer | Stronger answer | What the interviewer hears |
|---|---|---|
| ”The owner changed everything" | "We did the changes on verbal direction, and I allowed it” | You know where your authority was |
| ”The estimate was light before I got there" | "I inherited a thin budget and said so in my first forecast” | You deliver bad news early |
| ”It worked out in the end" | "We gave back $1,250,000 of fee” | You know your numbers |
| ”My superintendent let me down" | "I had the wrong superintendent and waited too long to act” | How you will describe his people |
| ”I would rather not get into it" | "It settled and the terms are private. Here is my part” | You keep confidences, his included |
The last row is where senior candidates get into trouble, because some of what happened is not theirs to tell.
What should you keep confidential about a problem project?
Names, settlement terms, anything covered by a confidentiality clause or an open dispute, and your former employer’s finances beyond your own job. You can describe your decisions fully without any of those. If a claim is still live, ask an attorney what you may say before the interview.
Leave these out:
- The owner’s name and the project’s name. “A hospital addition in Atlanta” is enough. If the interviewer can guess, he can guess.
- People. Titles only: the superintendent, the architect, the owner’s representative.
- Settlement terms. Agreements that end disputes commonly carry confidentiality terms. Whether one binds you personally is a question for counsel, and state law varies.
- Anything in litigation. You may be a witness. Say that the matter is open and move to your own part.
- The firm’s wider finances. What the job did to your former employer’s year or its bonding is not yours to share.
On federal work there is a further layer. Federal agencies prepare performance evaluations on construction contracts, a requirement referenced in FAR Part 36, so a troubled federal job has a written record that belongs to your former employer and the agency. Describe the job. Do not quote the evaluation.
Now and then an interviewer presses for the name. In Dallas or Houston, where the general contractors of a given size all know one another’s owners, he may not be curious at all. He may be checking whether you would hand over his. “I would rather not name them, and I would do the same for you” is a complete answer, and he will respect it.
Which job to choose, and who else will tell it
Choose the job your references would bring up. If the loss was large enough that people in your market know about it, the interviewer will hear a version from someone, and yours should be on the table first.
Check your numbers before you use them. Contractors test what candidates claim about the work they have run, which our piece on backlog claims describes from the employer’s chair. A fee figure that turns out to be wrong by half does more damage than the loss it was describing. If you no longer have the cost report, say “about” and give a range.
Then tell the person most likely to be called. Ring the former colleague who saw the job, say how you plan to describe it and ask whether that matches what they remember. Agreement on wording does not matter. Agreement on facts does. If you left that employer soon afterward, the same reference will be asked about the departure, and our note on a short tenure covers that half of the call. If time out of work followed the job, the career gap gets its own short answer, so keep the two stories from bleeding into each other.
Last, say it aloud and time it. If the third move, your decision, takes less time than the first two together, you are still describing the weather.
Selah Talent Partners handles confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, for contractors across the United States, and a candidate is never charged for anything. It is the answer worth rehearsing before any interview, and the candidates page is where to try yours on someone who will not be deciding. So which job would you least like to be asked about, and can you tell it in three minutes without a single name?
Sources and further reading
- Occupational profile, Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction managers
- Surety bonds, US Small Business Administration
- FAR Part 36, Federal Acquisition Regulation, construction and architect-engineer contracts