How This Candidate Turned a $3.5 Million Risk into a Strategic Win for Philips
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Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
First question, um, what is the most difficult set of strategic issues you have had to face in your career? And so what I'm looking for specifically is very high visibility issues within your organization, where you were responsible for determining what needed to be done.
CANDIDATE
Correct, correct, correct. Uh, can I take a minute or two to gather my thoughts?
INTERVIEWER
Yes, of course. And, and just as a future note, you don't have to tell me to say I need a minute. Take, take a minute. It's fine.
CANDIDATE
Yeah. Yeah, I'm ready with my answer, Brandon, so. Yeah, so, uh, last year, um, uh, when I was in SCM role, one of our very big customers wanted to expand in Caribbean, uh, region. It was 3.5
INTERVIEWER
million, they wanted to, they wanted to expand.
CANDIDATE
Uh, so it's, it was an Indian, uh, customer, but they wanted to expand in the Caribbean region in near USA. It's a Cayman Island. Got it. Yeah, uh, it's a hospital which is based out of India but wanted to expand in there. It was a $3.5 million opportunity and they wanted Phillips to be their technological partner. Uh, just so,
INTERVIEWER
just because I hold on, just because I know that you're in India, ₹3.5 million or $3.5 million US dollars.
CANDIDATE
These are dollars because uh it's a big account it's $1 3.5 dollars uh I have I have uh synchronized all my numbers into dollars though I used to be in rupees but Yeah, so it was 3 $3.5 million dollar opportunity and uh the customer wanted to uh be Phillips in uh to be their technological partner. This particular international project became the most challenging project in the Philips, India history because we, as in Philips India, didn't have a capability to provide the services in Caribbean island. To list down some of the key challenges which I faced before even starting the project, question was that these were involving high-end capital equipments like CT scan, MRI. These are very heavy equipment. So how the installation would get provided when we didn't have any vendor in there. How the AMC and CMC services, which we say that maintenance services for over the next 10 periods would get provided and third important step was that a lot of third party items get involved like UPS, which is basically which Philips don't prepare, uh, manufacture, but we used to take the, uh, services of third party. How those equipment would get provided and who would maintain those services over the period of 10 years. It no, I, uh, listed down all these challenges in front of the management because the deal was big whether to go ahead or not because it was a risky project, but I strongly advocated to go ahead with this project because of the strategic reasons because in the next two years, two more opportunities worth $8 million from Indian customers were coming up in the Cayman Island itself. And whichever vendor gets the edge, whichever vendor would win this particular opportunity of $3.5 million would definitely get the edge in the next two pro uh projects. Hence, I got the note to go ahead and to find out the possible solution. Now task was there to find out the solution for all the roadblocks which we have listed down even before starting the project. I understood that these are are were the some of the challenges which we have never faced. So if I try to solve by myself, I would have sunk in. I would not have focused. I would not get time to focus on, on any other opportunity. Hence, I involve important stakeholders from service team, from project team, and from the finance team in order to brainstorm the solution. So I, I scheduled a meeting, um. I scheduled uh a weekly meeting with them to brainstorm the possible solutions for all those challenges. Finally, after 3 to 4 months of deliberation and the negotiation, I was able to find one vendor in Turkey who has the capability to provide the services of mechanical installation and the third party in USA in the Cayman Islands, basically. And India service team got ready to station some of the employees, 7 employees in the Cayman Islands to provide the services. I was almost at the nego uh at the end of negotiation stage when uh India Phillips service team came up with a different issue when they when they got, they got to know that as per the Cayman Island laws they are not eligible to provide the services. Because in order to provide the services you should have an office in the Cayman Islands. That's where again it was a huge setback. I again had to find some of the solution. I reached out to Philips Netherland where our global office was situated, uh, needed to find some of the, uh, uh, needed to find some of the stakeholders who could help me. Ultimately when I started digging deep into the solution I could find one vendor in the Miami who could provide the services uh for the next 10 years. These are maintenance services for the next 10 years and can become our vendor. After 5 months of continuous deliberation negotiation, I was able to solve all the challenges and was able to win a $3.5 million dollar deal, but more, more importantly, I created a three-pager document. In order to uh to list down all the challenges and the solution which I uh which I faced over the period of this project so that if anybody has will be uh. Uh, implementing these international projects, they don't have to reinvent the wheel and, uh, refer my document.
INTERVIEWER
Uh, just so I, I just want to get the timing clear. Uh, you said 4 months and then you said 5 months. Was that the 4 months plus 5 months, or was it just 5 months total, just so I understand the timing.
CANDIDATE
So, uh, initially I said 4 months, almost 4 months was there when, uh, I was almost at the negotiation stage, but because of the last minute hiccup, it took almost 5 months. Total was 5 months, uh, but yeah.
INTERVIEWER
OK, I just, that's, I just want to get the, the clarity around how long this took. OK, great. So. When you think about The hurdles that you had in front of you, you, you outlined a couple of them at a, at a high level and you, you breeze through them pretty quickly. So as someone who's an outsider, it was not clear to me, um, all of them weren't crystal clear to me. What would you present as the most difficult of the obstacles that you had to overcome?
Interviewer Insight
as a framing element, it would have been helpful to scope the sizing of this opportunity with a comparative metric. Not a miss in not having it, just a coaching note on what could have made this a better answer. Separately, the candidate does not go a great job of clearly outlining the strategic issue - was it that the candidate and the company did not have ability to operate in a new country? Was is that they needed a new type of partner? This lack of clarity detracts from what was otherwise a very good start of an answer.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, so, uh, most difficult, uh, obstacle in this, if you are asking me that whatever obstacle I have defined, the most, uh, difficult obstacle was to find, uh, the third party vendors, uh, because those were not there in the Philips hand.
INTERVIEWER
Sure, but that's a, that's a, that's it's too broad an answer, right? Because, because you had, you had multiple things for which you needed third party vendors. So which of them. Turned out to be the hardest one to solve for.
CANDIDATE
OK. So, uh, I didn't understand your question. Can you repeat again this particular question so that I can elaborate?
INTERVIEWER
Sure. Uh, essentially what you've told me is There were a series of challenges to execute, to, to, to go execute in the Cayman Islands. Uh, one of them that you highlighted was the installation of equipment. Another one it sounded like was just delivery of equipment, and yet another one was the actual execution of the services-based contract within the, the, um, territorial borders of Cayman Islands based on government regulations which required you to have, uh, you know, any entity providing those services to have an office in that location. Great. So, I'm sure there was a long list of things that you had to solve in those 5 months. Of those things, which one was the most difficult?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, OK, so, uh, out of all those things, as I told you, that most difficult was to find a third party vendor. The reason being, uh, this was a multimodality deal. A lot of equipment were there for every equipment, at least 4 to 5 3rd party equipment were involved, so I had to find, so total 20+ 3rd party equipment were involved. I had to find for each third party equipment. I had to find one vendor. Who could provide the services in there? So, uh, who can provide the services, who can give the costing? So that's was the most difficult part because it became very cumbersome to find 20+ products vendors, third party vendors, uh, who can provide the services in Cayman Island.
Interviewer Insight
a noticeable drop off in the quality and quantity in this answer block. Candidate needs to spend more time enumerating what some of the challenges were, why they were challenges, and how they presented themselves.
INTERVIEWER
So, I understand that managing a search with that many vendors would be difficult, but it's still, you're still being a bit vague as to which of the individual pieces that were blockers was difficult. And, and I, it's fine if you want to tell me that the hardest part was managing the totality of the vendor search was, is that. The point that you're trying to make is just, OK. Um, OK, well, then, with that said, uh, it sounds like you would believe that you were successful, right, because you landed the contract, but in working through these five months, right, you had a lot of moving parts. So how did you, what metrics did you have in place or what, what operational framework did you put in place to let you know that you were in fact being successful as you went?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, so in the starting itself, uh, when I started executing the project, I started, uh, I created a game chart type of structure where I listed on all the challenges, possible challenges I can face and which I know at that particular period of time when I involve all the stakeholders, I, we keep on taking those challenges whenever we found a solution. So that particular gain chart keep on giving the idea that how many challenges are still left to solve and what can we faced in the future. OK.
Interviewer Insight
during interview: too non-specific; not enough of a framework walkthrough. Insufficient to simply say: "Gannt chart."
Interviewer Insight
when asked a direct question about metrics, name the metrics and give the numbers. This is a pretty big miss, but not a huge red flag given that this was the first answer block.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Candidate presented a reasonable and level appropriate problem which required an additional level or work and diligence which neither the candidate nor the team had ever encountered. This was overall a very good story with some difficult international problems. The candidate did a good job of setting up the problem space and walking through how they solved it. Missing from the answer was sufficient detail on the nature of the strategic issue, how the problem was worked through specifically (i.e. overcoming obstacles) and complete failure to name metrics of success.