Interview Question: "What Was Your Biggest Challenge as a Student?"

When someone applies for an entry-level position, a typical job interview question they might be asked is how they’ve handled significant obstacles in the past. If you are currently in high school or college and lack work experience, interviewers may phrase this question as, “Tell me about the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a student.”

These challenges might be academic or personal—there is a wide gamut of situations you might choose to share. Perhaps you were faced with completing an important team project, but your teammates bailed at the last minute. Maybe you were an officer in an extracurricular or service organization tasked with organizing a major fundraising project. Or, like many students today, you might have struggled to balance your classwork with the demands of a necessary part-time or full-time job.

More important than the challenge is how you handled it: Use this as an opportunity to highlight strengths that would be helpful on the job, such as persistence, communication skills, and time management abilities.

Learn how to answer interview questions about challenges, what to say when you respond, and review examples of the best responses.

What the Interviewer Really Wants To Know

This question is a way for interviewers to get a sense of how you tackle problems and adversity. They are also interested in your level of self-motivation. Are you an individual who actively seeks new challenges in order to develop your skills and gain knowledge and experience? Or are you someone who passively avoids difficult situations until they arise, and you are forced to cope?

How To Answer, “What Was Your Biggest Challenge as a Student?”

Be honest. It’s tempting to toss back a humble brag as a response, e.g., “My biggest challenge was that I’m such a perfectionist!” Don’t do this. Everyone has flaws and areas for improvement. By pretending you don’t, you’d force the hiring manager to assume that you’re either lying or not self-aware. Neither makes a good impression.

Focus on challenges you’ve conquered. By the same token, now is not the time to present yourself in an unflattering light. There’s no need to share challenges you’re still actively trying to resolve. For instance, if you currently have trouble keeping your cool in stressful situations, don’t tell the hiring manager that you tend to freak out when the pressure is high. Instead, look for examples that show how you faced a challenge and overcame it. So, for instance, if you used to feel stressed before presentations, talk about how you solved the problem by taking a public speaking course and creating a schedule that allowed you to prepare ahead of time.

Look for opportunities to show that you’re the best person for the job. When answering this or any job interview questions, your goal is to show the hiring manager that you’re the best candidate for the position. That means matching your qualifications to the job and using your answers to show that you’d be a good fit. For example, if the job listing specifies that the employer is seeking someone with good time management skills, you might talk about how you developed a system to help you juggle a challenging course load and a part-time job.

Examples of the Best Answers

Here are sample interview answers that you can edit to fit your personal experiences and background. Notice how these responses all demonstrate desirable soft skills that employers hope to find in their new hires.

Why It Works: This candidate demonstrates a good degree of self-knowledge in admitting that their preferred learning style was one that allowed interactive, interpersonal communications rather than passive listening comprehension. Better still, they demonstrated that they could successfully recognize and adapt to what was a less-than-ideal classroom environment.

Desirable soft skills: Interpersonal communications, teamwork, adaptability, flexibility, and active problem-solving.   

Why It Works: This is a smart answer because the speaker shares what is a fairly common challenge for many students, then outlines the steps they took to overcome it.

Desirable soft skills: Self-motivation, problem-solving, personal initiative, and tenaciousness. 

Why It Works: Here, the candidate chooses to focus on a single job skill that they know would make her a valuable and productive employee: time management. They also express their belief in continuous improvement.

Desirable soft skills: Time management, self-initiative, self-knowledge, problem-solving, and willingness to learn.

Why It Works: This answer effectively uses the STAR interview response technique to describe a past Situation, explain the Task/Challenge involved, describe the Action(s) taken, and present the positive Result of the action.

Desirable soft skills: Strategic planning, problem-solving, personal initiative, communications, organization, and project management.    

Tips for Giving the Best Response

Practice your answers. It’s a good idea to have a couple of answers in mind, in case the interviewer nixes your first reply, or the interview goes in a direction you don’t anticipate. Regardless, you should devote some time to practice interviews before you meet with the hiring manager. Ask your career services office or a supportive friend to conduct mock interviews with you, to get a feel for how to answer questions effectively and organically—and change tracks when necessary.

Emphasize relevant soft skills. Even if you don’t have much professional work experience, as a student you’ve probably developed many of the soft skills (interpersonal or people skills) that employers are thrilled to find in entry-level job candidates. Highlight the soft skills mentioned in the employer’s job posting, then allude to these in your answer. 

Be enthusiastic. Use your tone of voice and body language to express your confidence and willingness to accept the sort of challenges the job would present. Humor, judiciously used, can also work in your favor.

What Not To Say

Don’t mention a significant challenge you failed. Don’t mention an important failure (like flunking a class) or use any sort of example that would raise a red flag with your employer about your reliability, ability to focus, coachability, or work ethic (like, “I had to miss a lot of classes”).

Don’t make excuses. When explaining a challenge, don’t make excuses for yourself or cast blame on an instructor or your classmates. Avoid negative statements like, “The professor expected too much.”

Possible Follow-Up Questions

• Why should we hire you? - Best Answers
• What is your greatest strength? - Best Answers
• What are your goals for the future? - Best Answers

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)