Tell me about a project you completed recently that was ahead of schedule.
"The majority of my projects are completed ahead of schedule. I believe that my clients deserve the best of me and I will work overtime when I can to deliver faster than expected. For instance, I had a client who was releasing their new brand strategy for January 1. The deadline was right around Christmas but, rather than stressing their team out by delivering on time and right around the holidays, I worked overtime every day for the first two weeks of December, to ensure timely delivery."
"I'm required to make 100 calls with 70 minutes talk time, and two appointments set daily. I prefer to set goals at about 125% to target. I never want to get myself into a situation where I cannot hit a simple metric like calls made or talk time, by being complacent. I cannot control if a customer shows up for a meeting that we've set, but I certainly can overachieve the call volume to attempt to mitigate a pipeline problem in the future."
"In my current role, I was given the task of migrating our payroll system to a new provider. I completed the project two weeks ahead of schedule allowing us to start the new service sooner."
"It drives me crazy, not being early. In my first job, at sixteen, I was told the adage, 'If you are not 10 minutes early, you are late', and it has stuck with me. I apply this same logic to how I train my team and their level of reliability. Gaining buy-in from my team is very important to me, and this is where I started with them. Every member of my team is early to client meetings, deliver their work before the deadline, and are eager to show up before ever being asked."
"I completed my quarterly student reviews five days ahead of schedule this last time around. I worked so hard and put my nose to the grindstone for a week. It was well worth the added effort not to feel the pressure of a looming deadline."
"Every month our store is given until the last Monday of the month to submit our inventory counts. This month I decided that my team would be better off having the count complete before the weekend rush hit. We submitted our inventory count by the Thursday afternoon. I plan to make this a habit every month, moving forward."
The interviewer would like to know about your project and deadline related accomplishments. Show that it is vital for you to meet and exceed work-related deadlines. Assure the interviewer that you can remain focused on a project and accomplish your goals ahead of schedule.
"In my current position I am expected to cold call 100 customers per week. Most of our associates will break this down into 20 per day, five days per week. What has attributed greatly to my success in this role is that I call 50 customers each day for the first two days and then have time to make additional calls throughout the week. This action equals a 25% surplus of cold calls to my portfolio. I am always ahead of target by going over and above that cold calling schedule."
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Anonymous Answer
In my role as a Finance team leader, there was a migration of task from my team to another; I had two months to clear the accounts and queries still pending before the hand over. I delegated some of my task to the rest of my team to have more time to focus in the accounts, as I knew pretty well the accounts and I was able to spot the reasons of the difference I could find. I finished the clearing of the pending job in less than a month and the migration could be done earlier than expected. This gave me the opportunity to have more time to provide a proper training for the new team.
Cindy's Feedback
Nice! Can you expand with details about how you achieved this feat? What organization skills did you use? How did you prioritize?
Anonymous Answer
In my previous role as a technology intern. I was always given the task of restructuring data for clients. I always completed this before the deadline, allowing the client to receive service quicker.
Cindy's Feedback
Good! You're following an effective format for answering these questions: Situation, Task, Action, and Result. I would recommend expanding on the actions you took to get to your good result. How did you organize your time (for example) to deliver before the deadline? What strategies did you employ?
Anonymous Answer
In my current MS program, we were asked to work on a data analytics project where we need to work on data and extract some insights from it. We as a team decided to work on the USA nutrient data set. I came up with the plan to complete the project before the deadline which includes: explore the data individually and come with individual findings and suggest the techniques to be used, discuss the ideas and make a decision on them and set up the roadmap for the tasks. For keeping all the work on schedule, we set up 5-minute stand-up calls every alternate day to discuss the status of the individual work, identify any impediments and come up with an action plan to resolve them. Constant communication and working on the roadmap made sure we were on schedule, therefore, we were able to complete our project one week before the submission date.
Marcie's Feedback
Excellent answer! You provide a very thorough example of a time when you led a project that was ultimately successful and completed before the deadline. Great job! Any interviewer would be impressed by this example and your leadership role in it.
Anonymous Answer
As a member of the Best Practice Committee of my previous job, we were required to identify issues that we thought were negatively affecting patients on our unities, and we were to come up with plans to improve those issues. We were told to submit the document 2 weeks prior to our committee meeting date. I always submitted my document prior to the deadline. My last project was ____________.
Stephanie's Feedback
Good response; you provide specific examples of how you are able to execute projects ahead of schedule, while also providing a bit of insight into your previous role.
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