Why This Program Manager's Commitment to Ownership Led to Unforeseen Project Challenges
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Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
All right. First, uh, question block. Give me an example of a time when you were not able to meet the commitments you had promised to one of your clients.
CANDIDATE
Um, I can give you an example of, uh, when I was working for Johnson Johnson. So Johnson Johnson was one of my biggest clients uh when I was working with EY in New York, um, and it was one of the longest and, uh, primarily I was working with the um IT business, um, owners and product owners. Um, for that specific project, we were doing an implementation of a new revenue management system. Uh, the product was a, um, a custom vendor-based, uh, solution, uh, but it was a very large scale, uh, and required, um, a lot of planning, um, so I was, I had the P.M. role on that and um. There was a there was a time that The requirements weren't met as a result of multiple, um, multiple, uh, restrictions that came through scope changes. Um, so it wasn't necessarily because of um my team's shortcoming, uh, but it ended up being that way and um pretty stressful, um. Uh, and, uh, stressful situation all around for uh my sponsor as well as myself, and it required kind of revamping the project plan fast. Um. And uh additional kind of budget work that had to go into it, so that made it more stressful, um, and it was mainly because the requirements for the product wasn't um it it changed, um, throughout uh the project um I it coming from pretty much stakeholders, owners, um. But uh it, it, like I mentioned, it mm took more work and effort, uh, and additional planning and some uh basically um waste in uh like requirements and some uh features that were built, um, but at the end of the day, we ended up, um. Delivering on the new scope and uh with a, with a little bit of uh delay that was pretty much agreed upon.
Interviewer Insight
this was an answer that suffered from a lack of clarity, and did not actually answer the question as asked. The lack of structure and adherence to the topic made it difficult to follow.
INTERVIEWER
So if you weren't changing the scope, right, if it was a client kind of making changes, fine, whatever, that you didn't actually fail to hit a commitment, right? I mean the the circumstances changed. The question was looking for a time when you made a commitment and you were not able to meet that commitment.
CANDIDATE
To be honest, I can't think of. Uh, a good example of that. Um, there's been times with my clients, uh, that I had to kind of work maybe longer hours or, um, especially working with multiple different staffs, kind of redoing their work, um. And in order to meet the timelines, but it didn't ever escalate to the point that we had to go to the clients and say, Um, sorry we didn't meet your, your, uh, requirements. Um, I think there, there was probably times that I can think of that. Um, I requested kind of more, um, uh, maybe a little bit more flexibility for giving like a higher level, um, situation overview of what happened, um, but it never escalated to the point of you didn't meet the standards.
Interviewer Insight
Candidate came to the mock interview underprepared with a sufficient set of stories from previous work experience. It's better to take a minute and attempt to answer than for candidate to say that they don't have an answer.
INTERVIEWER
So you'll forgive me if if I'm an interviewer and I'm talking to you and I'm and you're basically telling me you've never once failed to hit a target. I'm gonna, as an interviewer, I would say that's impossible, right? That's that's never happened in the history of people working in the history of mankind, right? So there there's certainly been situations where you haven't met commitments, right? Um, and I, and I would struggle with credulity to believe that there's never been a time in your career that you didn't hit your commitments. I would, I would, I would then put to you that either A, you're not trying hard enough or you're chronic underachiever, so, or, or, you know, kind of not living up to potential. So I don't want to believe that's true. So there there's not nothing that comes to mind when you think about, well, you know, we had, we had goals, commitments we're trying to hit and we didn't get there, nothing.
CANDIDATE
Let me think about it.
INTERVIEWER
OK, we'll circle back on that one.
CANDIDATE
OK. I will have to think of some example. commitment when Failed. To Meat. Um, OK.
INTERVIEWER
That's fine. We can move on to the next question.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Candidate was challenged in demonstrating Ownership in the specific question block. The answer as given did not specifically address the question as asked and when pressed was unable to come up with additional content which would sufficiently map to the question. In this specific instance it was clear that the candidate would benefit from better preparation for the interviews by more closely examining their work experience and developing their story set.