Guidehouse Mock Interview
Master 30 Guidehouse interview questions covering consulting cases, public sector expertise, and client delivery.
Question 15 of 30
How do you react when your team misses a deadline?
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Rachelle Enns is an interview coach and job search expert. She works with candidates to perform their best in employment, medical, and post-secondary admission interviews.
Missed deadlines are never good and can reflect poorly on you, but they do happen in the management consulting industry. The interviewer would like to understand better how you react to disappointment and plans not going your way. Give an example of a time when your team missed a deadline and walk the interviewer through the action that you took.
Rachelle Enns is an interview coach and job search expert. She works with candidates to perform their best in employment, medical, and post-secondary admission interviews.
"My team is highly efficient, and we rarely miss a deadline. When we do, it's surprising. We had a very challenging client last year who made a significant amount of changes throughout the entire project. These changes caused us to miss our deadline. I took action after that to ensure a better client onboarding process. This new process made sure we dug deeper with each client at the start which has resulted in fewer mid-project changes."
Rachelle Enns is an interview coach and job search expert. She works with candidates to perform their best in employment, medical, and post-secondary admission interviews.
"When my team misses a deadline it is disappointing, for sure. On the odd occasion that this has happened, I first ask my team for feedback. I want to know what I could have done better, as a leader, to make sure we hit our goal. Then, I ask them to look internally and tell me what they honestly feel they could have done differently. I prefer a collaborative approach to these types of conversations."
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Anonymous Answer
In the first place, I would work to avoid this situation, but it might still happen. I would approach this by reaching out to my team and scheduling a meeting. I would first consider where they were with this task during the check-in before the deadline. If I, as a senior, knew that the team was overwhelmed, then some of this accountability should fall on me as a leader and my inability to work with my team to accomplish the goal. I then would ask my team for an explanation. My last step would be asking what I could do to help my team accomplish this task.
Amanda's Feedback
Good answer! You've outlined a clear action plan that can get the project back on track if a deadline is missed. Take this answer one step further by explaining what you'd do to prevent a missed deadline in the future.
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