Group Project Survival for International Students
A restaurant with eight managers, a resume full of "we," and why the group project is your first interview answer.
Daniel V Pack
9/22/20263 min read
The restaurant I managed in Malibu had eight managers, and my boss called it a teaching restaurant. We rotated. A year running the bar, a year running the servers and hosts, a year running the deck, which was a huge outdoor deck on the beach. I started in banquets, working the big events and the beach weddings, and then I rotated like everybody else.
Everybody had a strength, though, and my boss knew what they were. She didn’t keep us in those jobs, but when the summer hit and the place got battered, she’d plug us in where we were strong. We were a destination spot. A Saturday in July could run a two to two and a half hour wait, and the target was $10,000 an hour. My strength was the host booth. If we were getting buried and I wasn’t in there calling names, I’d hear her from across the restaurant. “Dan, get in the damn booth.” So I’d get in the booth, get it organized, and start seating the place so the guests were happy and the kitchen could get food out in some kind of order.
One of the other managers took over banquets after me and complained about a server. Scattered, all over the place, had to be watched constantly. I asked what he had the guy doing. Setting up, running food, the basics. I said there’s your problem. Put him in charge of other people. When he had to make sure everybody else was doing their job, he paid attention. Left on his own, he’d finish his own work and go float around the deck and flirt with somebody.
That’s what a team is. Eight people who don’t all do the same thing, and somebody paying attention to who’s good at what.
What’s nice about a group project is that it’s a built-in answer to an interview question. It’s something you can put on your resume that shows you’ve worked on a team. Your first behavioral interview is going to have “Tell me about a time you had to work with a team” in it, or “Tell me about a difficult teammate and how you handled it.” You’re likely to get both. So pay attention during the project. Understand the dynamics. Document the actual teamwork. Keep track of what you put in, what you accomplished, and what came out of it. Then when the question comes, here’s my story.
Asking “wait, what are we actually being asked to do?” in the first meeting is participation, not an interruption. And when an American classmate pushes back on your idea, it’s about the idea. That takes some getting used to if you grew up somewhere it would have read as rude.
In that first meeting, if there’s a section that interests you or that you know you’d do well, volunteer for it. And if there’s a piece nobody wants, and you’re willing, take it.
Now the part I didn’t do myself. Do as I say, not as I do.
My boss pointed me at an opportunity she thought was a good fit, so I put together a resume and brought it to her. It was all “we.” The team started this. The team cut the wait times. The team did this and accomplished that. She read it and said get rid of all of that. This should be what you did. I pushed back. It was her idea. We did it as a team. She said no. You started this program. You got our wait times down. You improved the reservations. Own it. If they want to know how it happened and who else was involved, they’ll ask.
Years later I sat in a lot of mock interviews where a student had a group project on the resume and I asked them to walk me through it. It came out exactly the way mine had. The team decided. The team built. The team accomplished. Getting them to say “I” was like pulling teeth.
If you don’t take credit for what you did, someone else will. Get used to saying it now, in a classroom, because the working world is a good deal more cutthroat than a class project. And if somebody in the group isn’t doing their part, raise it with the group first, then with the professor while there’s still time to do something about it.
Control what you can control. You can’t fix a lazy teammate. You can decide what you take on and whether you can say what you did when somebody asks.
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