Describe a time you worked in a team

How to approach this cue card

This card tests narrative structure and your ability to describe your specific contribution within a group, which is a common weak point — many candidates describe what “we” did as a group but never clarify what they personally did. The examiner wants to hear your role stated clearly, so treat “what your role was” as the bullet to plan most carefully, since it’s the part that’s easiest to leave vague.

Choose a team experience you remember with specific detail: a group assignment at school or university, a project at work, organising a family event, or a sports team. It doesn’t need to have gone perfectly — a team experience with some friction or a late-stage problem often makes for a more interesting, more honestly reflective answer than one where everything went smoothly.

Give about 20 seconds to setting up the task, 30 seconds to who was involved, and then be deliberate about spending real time on your specific role — what you actually did, not just what the group achieved. Close with genuine reflection on how you felt, which invites more complex, evaluative language.

Vocabulary that lifts this answer

A one-minute plan

• task: university project, marketing plan, four people
• who: classmates, mixed skills, one late joiner
• role: research and writing the final report
• felt: stressful near deadline, proud at the end
• closing: learned to divide tasks earlier next time

Sample answer

This is one possible way to structure a response to this card, not a script — the specific task and role should reflect your own experience.

I’d like to talk about a group project during my final year at university, where four of us had to put together a full marketing plan for a fictional product as part of an assessed module. We were assigned to the group somewhat randomly, so I didn’t know two of the other three particularly well beforehand, which added a slightly nervous element at the start. My specific role ended up being research and writing the final report, since I’m generally more comfortable with writing than with the design work, while another member focused on the visual presentation and a third handled most of the actual client-facing pitch we had to record.

Honestly, the experience was a bit stressful in the final week, mainly because we hadn’t divided the workload clearly enough at the very beginning, so a few tasks ended up overlapping while others were left undone until quite late. One teammate really stepped up during that final push, pulling a couple of late nights to help pull everything together, and I think that saved the project more than any of us would like to admit. By the end, though, I felt genuinely proud of what we’d produced, and slightly surprised at how well four fairly different working styles eventually came together. If I’m honest, the biggest thing I took from it wasn’t really about marketing at all — it was learning to agree on who’s doing what much earlier next time, rather than assuming it would sort itself out.

Common mistakes on this card

• Describing only what “the team” did and never clarifying your own specific role.
• Presenting an unrealistically perfect team with no friction, which can sound rehearsed.
• Naming teammates by role only (“a colleague,” “a classmate”) with no other detail at all.
• Rushing “how you felt” into a single adjective instead of a genuine reflection.