Building Relationships & Collaboration

Level: 101 (Entry to Mid-Level)
Category: Building Relationships & Collaboration

Question 3: Building Trust with New Team Members

Question: Tell me about a time when you joined a new team or had to work with new colleagues. How did you go about building relationships and establishing yourself as a reliable collaborator?

Strong Answer Example

When I joined Uber's payments team, I was replacing someone who had been there for 3 years and was well-respected. The team was skeptical about bringing in someone new, especially for such a critical system handling billions in transactions.

Earning Initial Trust:
In my first week, I focused on learning rather than making changes. I scheduled 1:1s with each team member to understand their concerns, priorities, and how the current system worked. I also asked to shadow on-call rotations to see real-world operations.