Describe a time when you were able to remove a serious roadblock preventing your project team from making progress.
With this question, you are being assessed on your ability to identify obstacles and remove them yourself even when it is not part of your typical responsibilities. In your answer, explain what the roadblock was, why it was a roadblock, and the steps you took to eliminate it. The interviewer will also be interested that you were able to deliver results successfully because of your decisiveness.
"Once I had a team member who was unresponsive. They were responsible for an evaluation that was a highly consequential milestone for the project. Without it, we would not have the means to add the engineers necessary to complete the project. Because they were working remotely, I would typically just reach out through email and chat multiple times. This time, I escalated the issue to their superior, who was a VP and asked for the team member's phone number. I immediately gave them a call and they confessed that they had not even started with the task at all and that it would be impossible to deliver on time. We assessed how much time it would take to complete, and what skill set and authorization the task required. Then, I identified two people to divide the sub-tasks between the two of them. I went back to the VP for the necessary authorization. The original task owner agreed to oversee the quality of the deliverable. We still missed the deadline, but I was able to give all the stakeholders and sponsors a heads-up in real-time."
