July 8, 2021

How to talk about responsibilities in a job interview (and how they differ from ‘duties’)

7 min read

There’s no one standard way to run a job interview – in fact our clients have a myriad of ways they like to assess a candidate’s fit for a position. You might interview a 1-1, 1-2 or even talk to a panel. The questions might be open ended and organic, or set based on a tight framework or behavioural based methodology. But there’s one thing that is consistent – and that’s the importance of answering a question substantially and positively. If you’re about to give a one word answer, there’s a good chance you have misunderstood the question!

In this article, we’re going to explore the idea of duties vs. responsibilities and how they are both important to cover in your answers. It can be tricky telling the difference on face value, but these two concepts manifest entirely differently as you assume a position in a company.

What is considered a ‘duty’ of a job?

A duty really refers to a requirement, or expected tasks you’ll carry out in a role. They are more to do with a job description and less about you, the individual. All jobs include duties that need to be done regardless of who fills the position. They are designed to make the role function properly within the context of a wider team and organisation.

Duties are expected and fulfilled. There’s often a measure or yes/no answer as to whether duties are being done or not.

What is considered a ‘responsibility’ of a job?

Responsibility in the job world is less about actions and more about being ‘on the hook’ for something in the business. If you’ve got a responsibility for something in the business, you are mostly concerned with it being done vs. who actually does it. This is why leaders in a business have plenty of responsibility – they will utilise the skills of their team to see it out, providing support and direction where needed.

For example, let’s take the activity of front end development. A duty associated with this job might be “coding and styling of visual components”. And a responsibility of this job might be ‘ensuring that our online portal’s forms offered a positive user experience’.

They may seem nuanced, but employers will be listening out for examples of responsibility as well as duties. Remember, your CV can do some of the heavy lifting when it comes to duties, and talk to some responsibilities. But it’s in your job interview, where you’ve got the format to answer in long form, that you’ll best illustrate your fit for the role.

Using the job description/job ad to understand the duties of the role

Preparation is everything with a job interview. The last thing a hiring manager wants to do is reiterate what’s already in the ad. Take a few hours to read through the job ad (and description if that’s available) and become familiar with exactly what the employer is looking for. Some candidates we talk to like to print out or mark up the job ad digitally, making notes against each requirement or sentence with relevant experience they bring that aligns to this.

Go through the job ad and look for language like “in this role you will be…” . This is the most logical place to start when listing out the duties that will be expected of you. Then, take a look at the experience/qualifications to pick out the technical/hard skills desired. Make a list of these.

With the ‘what’ clearly extracted from the ad, you can now go through other parts of the job ad, such as the company’s mission, the team, the culture etc. It’s here where you can start to get an idea of some of the responsibilities you may have the opportunity to take, which is an excellent place to prepare answer forms.

How to surface your past experience with holding responsibilities

Time to sit down with your CV and/or LinkedIn profile and do some reflection. Every role you’ve had there will be responsibilities you can point to. Here’s how to surface ‘responsibilities’ from previous work experience:

What was the end result of the work you did in the job?
What risks did you individually have to navigate through?
What tasks were delegated or given to you by a leader to ‘own’?
What activities outside of your job description did you take on in the role?
What parts of the business or project were solely on you to make sure they happened?
Did you train or lead others?

Spend a good amount of time on each role as it can be tricky to write these out immediately. By answering the above questions you can start to build a list of responsibilities.

Applying past responsibilities to requirements of the role in preparation for the interview

Now you’re able to go through the long list, with the job ad next to you and mark out the responsibilities that directly apply to the requirements of the position. You might want to copy and paste the job ad into a document, split up each requirement and underneath drop in the past experience that applies.

It might sound like a bit of work, but believe us, you’ll be thankful when you’re sitting in the interview and have this experience to draw from immediately. Taking a minute to answer every question can at best slow the energy down, and at worst, look simply unprepared.

Find responsibilities in every job, no matter how junior

The reality is that every single job from mowing the lawns to CEO of a major organisation has ‘responsibility’. Often certain actions we took can be undersold as simply duty, when in actual fact the importance behind the action and your personal accountability means these are legitimately responsibilities you were managing.

Situation, Task, Action, Result

STAR method is just one way to answer a job interview question but can be useful to structure a comprehensive answer, as well as provide you a structure to prepare for. Some job interviews will require this type of answer, often framed as ‘behavioural’ style interviews. Even if this isn’t outwardly required by the hiring manager, you may wish to use STAR to prepare answers that focus around responsibilities.

Here’s an example:

Tell us about a time where you didn’t agree with the decisions made by a leader and how you navigated this?

Situation: The suggested platform to build a customer portal was one I’d had experience with and encountered numerous issues with.

Task: I was expected, as an experienced FED in the team, to provide some guidance to others about the best way to apply our designs to the platform.

Action: I arranged a 15m one on one with my direct lead, confidentially to air the concern, rather than put them on the spot in front of the whole team. We had a discussion where I cited previous issues with the platform chosen and why they could put us in trouble later on.

Result: My lead was grateful that someone had spoken up and helped the business mitigate risk. Together we put together communication for the team and I was made responsible for identifying some alternative options as well as investigating the latest version of the platform in question. Ultimately the business proceeded with the platform, after we got assurance from the vendor that my past experiences were due to issues that were now resolved. Ultimately my manager developed greater trust in me for being open, up front but respectful in the manner in which I went about it.

Now, you don’t need to verbalise ‘STAR’ method in the interview itself, but instead map out your examples ahead of the interview in this way as it will a) help you remember the scenarios, and b) structure them in a way that lines up with what the interviewer wants to hear.

Through a STAR type answer, you can pick out examples of you taking responsibilities that will apply to the role you’re interviewing for. The example above includes instances of existing (provide guidance to others) and newly-given responsibilities (help identify alternative options). As you prepare your STAR stories, try highlighting these moments to ensure you speak to them in the interview. You will also naturally cover off duties of your role through these answers and your CV which provides the timeline/context for the interview as you talk.

Examples of responsibilities within the IT sector

Clean, secure code
Security of systems
Training of others
Ensure a project hits milestones
Budget is kept to
Provide the best possible user experience
Designing a solution for the business that meets all stakeholder’s needs
Understanding and communicating requirements of a project
Represent the technology side of the business to other departments.
Protect the business from cyber threats
Reliability of information and data.
Ensuring our users can access our product, uninterrupted.

What’s the hardest interview question you’ve been asked?

We’d like to know! Get in touch with our team here to share your experiences or ask us a question.

Skills that will outlast tech industry disruption: Future-proofing your IT toolkit

8 min read

Those in the tech industry are perhaps better conditioned to change than any other field. It’s pretty much built into the job. But this doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t core transferable skills that will be applicable no matter what lies ahead. If you’re an IT professional and want to make sure you’ll always be employable, here’s a selection of skills that you can rely on long into the future.

The ability to learn new platforms and languages

Having existing knowledge of a programming language like Python or library like React Native will help you land roles throughout NZ for the foreseeable future. But even better is having an efficient and effective way of learning new disciplines that can be applied to work relatively quickly.

Some might argue that the ability to learn is simply something you’re born with. We don’t agree. With practice, learning can become fine-tuned. Doing research on ways to learn, memorise and apply fresh skills can speed up the process from novice to educated on any given platform.

Part of learning is putting yourself out there to get feedback and work through challenges you don’t immediately know the solution for. Going through this process isn’t just teaching you the end skill, but actually improves your ability and openness for future learning too. We need to be open to learning first before anything will stick – and this means not being an expert. This can be an interesting challenge for those who are long-standing experts in certain platforms and languages. But no matter how experienced, having the ability to learn is going to help you broaden your CV and be a more attractive employment prospect down the road.

Testing and QA methodology

We struggle to imagine a world where testing and QA is not part of any digital-based solution. Quality control is critical in order to deliver a good user experience as well as patching any vulnerabilities.

Testing in 2021 is a combination of processes, people and tools. And it’s not just the technical or ‘functional’ testing that’s important; user acceptance, integrations and security also need thorough stress testing before the product is released to the end user.

If you haven’t already, take some time to learn more about testing approaches – in a larger organisation you may have access to testing specialists who can provide a depth of knowledge in this area. Also do some of your own research online around the tools currently available and learn how these work.

Having a working knowledge of testing platforms helps more than just those doing the QA. As a developer or architect, you can consider these aspects of a build during the build itself, helping to deliver something better at the QA stage. As the digital world becomes more complex and nuanced, the ability to apply a QA lens to a project is highly valuable to any employer.

Front-end design and user experience skills

If user experience ceases to become a desired skill in tech, we’ve got bigger problems. As an IT professional, the UI and UX of a solution will always be a key consideration. Understanding principles and best practices around making a product accessible and enjoyable to use is an applicable skill to virtually any project where there’s an end ‘user’. Websites, internal portals, software, tools – these all need to be created with the UX at the fore.

The devices we use may change, the platforms we engage with could be different, but we aren’t going to stop demanding better experiences.

It’s a broad field with plenty of elements to learn about. For many IT professionals working in the industry today, UX is simply part of the project and learning is happening every day through conversations, sprints, presentations and testing. For anyone not already in the FED or UX space, there’s a lot of online information and courses available where you can grow your understanding of the field. With many projects requiring front and back end resources (often from the same person!), simply working alongside experts at front end and UX will help build your capability here.

Data management and security practices

It’s maybe one of the most talked about elements to technology in the past few years, but there’s no signs that data and its management will become any less of a priority for organisations any time soon.

With more of our business and personal lives being run digitally, we have bigger demands on the safety and handling of the activity. For any organisation that handles individuals’ data, there’s a non-negotiable need for this to be protected from any leaks or nefarious access.

We expect that the roles within this space will continue to multiply across New Zealand, making anyone with a good working knowledge and application of data and security highly sought after.

And this is a practice that will still be important in 10-20 years time, regardless of the way we’re living our lives digitally – so if you’ve got an interest in this space, there’s no better time than now to start upskilling.

Business Analytical skills

Because a BA does a range of tasks outside of the development of a solution itself, the role is largely agnostic of certain platforms or languages. Instead a BA needs to expertly assess a project or organisation and their ability to deliver an outcome. This requires critical thinking, problem solving and excellent communication skills. We’ve worked with many tech professionals with a background in hands-on development who’ve moved into BA work as they broaden their focus out to helping businesses deliver tech solutions from a requirements, budget and process perspective.

You can learn more about becoming a BA in our dedicated page here.

Core tech skills

There’s going to be elements to coding and development that are bound to stick around. The building blocks of the discipline are used in many new languages, with syntax and function carrying through to new frameworks. If you’re a tech professional in the development space, there’s always going to be a useful application for skills in Javascript, HTML, CSS, Server-side, Client-side, APIs and other core skills. We know that many of you reading this will already have experience in some of maybe even all of these areas. But we can’t stress enough how valuable these are to not only gain but continue refining. The tech world is still largely powered off these things.

Agile methodology

There’s no 100% guarantee that a new methodology for organising IT projects and workflows won’t come and replace Agile. But if the last decade is anything to go by, the principles of Agile are well-proven and likely here to stay in some form or another. Having a good understanding of how an agile team works is a good idea for anyone looking to end up in a leadership role. Working in an agile team builds on other peripheral skills like the ability to focus on smaller parts of a project over a smaller period of time and becoming comfortable with multiple iterations.

Ability to present ideas

Presenting ideas and thoughts isn’t just a skill reserved for management. When certain functionality or solutions are put forth to a stakeholder, you as an IT professional may be responsible at least in part for presenting the case as to the benefits of such an approach. This is a real art that takes practice to get right – go too technical and you may struggle to effectively convey your ideas. Regardless of where tech goes in the 5, 10, 15 years, there will always be a place for effective communicators within any IT-based project team.

Critical thinking

Mastering the skill of analysing and reviewing information is a valuable addition to any IT professional’s toolkit. In our field, it’s not just a matter of using critical thinking skills to solve a challenge within your project, it’s the ability to understand how evolving and emerging technologies fit into the future stack of a project or organisation. The amount of variables at play in the tech sector simply demands an ability to assess situations and facts to make the right move forward.

Wondering about the best way to develop critical thinking abilities? Put yourself in situations that demand this. Over time you’ll build up experience that refines your ability to evaluate and act.

Empathy and emotional intelligence

While this isn’t unique to the tech sector, it’s no less important. These qualities are most apparent when they are absent. Empathy and emotional intelligence manifests in a number of positive ways professionally, including:

the ability to see and understand other’s viewpoints
knowing how to communicate with others in a team
a care for the workplace culture, and not just the work
building a solution that suits the user first, and
being able to lift others around you.

Building more awareness of the people element to projects is a trait natural to some and less so for others. And that’s okay – much like other soft skills, you can nurture and grow these with mindfulness and practical application in your day to day work life.

Want to harness your transferable skills into a new IT opportunity?

Get in touch with our team to discuss how we can help you prepare you for the next stage of your IT career. We help our candidates with CVs, cover letters, interview skills and a lot more to give you the best shot at landing that next role.