Commercial Awareness Interview Question

[Joe Pagett]

Was a bit stumped when I was asked this at interview a little while back, the question went along the lines of:

'Could you give us an example of where you used commercial awareness in a professional situation'

So having thought about it, my thoughts are as follows, but I am still not sure how to answer it to a satisfactory degree

• An example from a legal internship or work experience, although it might be rarer for commercial awareness to fit in there depending on the job
• How my knowledge from having read about a particular business/industry benefitted my work as I already had a grounding in the area, or noticed something quicker due to having seen something similar before

 

[Romiras]

Think about it along the lines of recognising relevant market forces, the context, the industry, etc and using that knowledge to "add value" in a professional role. For example, giving advice to a client (even if it is a simple request) and thinking about the best solution for them (perhaps considering their fee expectations, particular requests, particular sticking points, etc), which may be different from the best solution for a large or small corporation or the best solution 'legally' / 'objectively'.

 

[Joe Pagett]

Think about it along the lines of recognising relevant market forces, the context, the industry, etc and using that knowledge to "add value" in a professional role. For example, giving advice to a client (even if it is a simple request) and thinking about the best solution for them (perhaps considering their fee expectations, particular requests, particular sticking points, etc), which may be different from the best solution for a large or small corporation or the best solution 'legally' / 'objectively'.

Cheers for the response, definitely see how this aligns and can be applied to answering the question.

Will try think of a time this has been true of one of my experiences and assess my past experiences based on this

 

[Alice G]

Cheers for the response, definitely see how this aligns and can be applied to answering the question.

Will try think of a time this has been true of one of my experiences and assess my past experiences based on this

Totally agree with what’s been said. Commercial awareness doesn’t just mean applying the news and current trends to a situation but just thinking in a commercial way.

I used to work for Starbucks and would have to think commercially about how I could best drive sales. I would upsell products which were higher value or those which we had too much stock of to try and ensure we were hitting targets but also not wasting produce. I guess in a clever way you can arguably draw a connection to legal services here where firms will cross sell services to clients to also drive value which is relatively akin to this sales point. I guess if you had words to do this it might elevate an answer.
I also had to think about shift deployment as a supervisor and accounting for peak periods and ensuring I had positioned everyone well depending on their strengths for when we didn’t have the time to help and train people on their weaker areas. We did this training in the quieter mornings or before closing instead.
These examples may not on the surface seem that ‘commercial’ but they were still led by commercial thinking and my knowledge of the business and the store and how we could best drive sales and customer experience.
I hope this helps- I’ve picked the trickiest job as an example as my other jobs have been more ‘commercial’ in nature but please feel free to post some further thoughts on this and happy to help and guide you where I can

 

[Joe Pagett]

Totally agree with what’s been said. Commercial awareness doesn’t just mean applying the news and current trends to a situation but just thinking in a commercial way.

I used to work for Starbucks and would have to think commercially about how I could best drive sales. I would upsell products which were higher value or those which we had too much stock of to try and ensure we were hitting targets but also not wasting produce. I guess in a clever way you can arguably draw a connection to legal services here where firms will cross sell services to clients to also drive value which is relatively akin to this sales point. I guess if you had words to do this it might elevate an answer.
I also had to think about shift deployment as a supervisor and accounting for peak periods and ensuring I had positioned everyone well depending on their strengths for when we didn’t have the time to help and train people on their weaker areas. We did this training in the quieter mornings or before closing instead.
These examples may not on the surface seem that ‘commercial’ but they were still led by commercial thinking and my knowledge of the business and the store and how we could best drive sales and customer experience.
I hope this helps- I’ve picked the trickiest job as an example as my other jobs have been more ‘commercial’ in nature but please feel free to post some further thoughts on this and happy to help and guide you where I can

Thanks for the response Alice, appreciate it.

When I was asked on the spot I talked about being praised for taking the initiative at an internship for coming up with ideas to promote the firm and utilising their LinkedIn profile. I guess if I wanted to use this response I would have to highlight why I deemed it commercial awareness applied professionally as they did not seem too impressed haha

Adding an element like 'I knew X would work well because of my knowledge of Y'?

 

[Alice G]

Thanks for the response Alice, appreciate it.

When I was asked on the spot I talked about being praised for taking the initiative at an internship for coming up with ideas to promote the firm and utilising their LinkedIn profile. I guess if I wanted to use this response I would have to highlight why I deemed it commercial awareness applied professionally as they did not seem too impressed haha

Adding an element like 'I knew X would work well because of my knowledge of Y'?

Yeah I suppose so or just really making it clear that you were referring to marketing strategy and how important this is to businesses. You could then draw on an example of a business you know to have done marketing well and those who’ve made blunders in the past. For example, from memory, H&M had really bad backlash following some t-shirt designs I believe. I also remember one of the Jenner sisters did a soft drink advert which wasn’t well received. You could also then do well to contrast this with a business with good marketing and PR strategies. I hope this helps but I guess you can discuss anything that’s commercial but just try to make it really clear you grasp why this matters that would be my take and advice