PwC Mock Interview
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Question 15 of 35
How do you react when your team misses a deadline?
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Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
The question aims to understand how you react to disappointment and professional setbacks. Your answer could offer them insights into your emotional maturity, whether you let your disappointment get the best of you or learn from and apply the lessons of your failures towards shoring up your future success. Give an example of a time your team missed a deadline and walk the interviewer through the action you took and the perspective it helped you build.
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Kimberly is a freelance writer and editor with a decade of experience in the education field, including her time as a pre-kindergarten teacher.
"My team is highly efficient, and we rarely miss a deadline. When we do, it's surprising. Last year, we had a very challenging client who made significant changes throughout the 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."
Kimberly is a freelance writer and editor with a decade of experience in the education field, including her time as a pre-kindergarten teacher.
"When my team misses a deadline, it is disappointing. On the odd occasion that this happens, I first ask my team for feedback. I want to know what I could have done better as a leader to 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
With Agile, there are no surprises. Since the progress is monitored always, I as a product owner, know the status of the release. If due to technical reasons or when the team member is not available which will make us miss the deadline. I would inform the management about the status And with daily standup, a lot of these are easily handled. Let's assume it comes as a last min surprise, I would deprioritize and put items in the backlog plan for the release or will ask additional weeks to have those items complete and release it few weeks late
Marcie's Feedback
Excellent! Your reply indicates that you and your team rarely miss deadlines in the first place, which the interviewer will definitely be happy to hear. But you also explain what you would do in this situation, thereby answering the question and showing that if needed you could handle this problem. Great job!
Anonymous Answer
I would quickly ascertain why we missed the mark and rectify the situation. Calm, clear communication is essential at this point to the team so we do our best in fixing the situation and make sure that it doesn't happen again in the future. I recall when this happened with a small company that I was running. A team member missed an important deadline while out sick which really hurt the others in the group. We worked to repair the camaraderie and made sure that everyone knew how to handle this better in the future. I had to ask some to be calm in how they communicate and asked the others that didn't let the others know he was out sick to keep us all informed, even if it takes just a moment. In the end, the team was stronger for it and there was no lasting damage.
Amanda's Feedback
Good job! You've focused on learning from and rectifying the situation so that a future deadline is not missed. You've also provided a workplace example, which gives your response more impact. You can enhance this answer further by explaining what deadline was missed, how it hurt the team or company, and how the team worked together to remedy the situation at the moment before you worked on preventing it in the future.
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