What is the behavioral interview answer method?
Sitation
Alternatives
Action
Result
Tell me about yourself
Sure I’d love to
- I currently lead project teams and do user experience at a product consulting company called SolutionSet. I’ve been here for about two years.
- We have a number of clients who are looking to either simplify their products or design new products from scratch. I really like the challenge and variety.
- After graduating from college, I started working for an investment bank called Lehman Brothers as part of their technology analyst program. Through several jobs at hedge funds, I shifted my focus to analysis and investment startegy working as a quant with a group of credit traders
- After the bubble burst in 2008, I really wanted to do something worthwhile with my time where I could show the fruits of my labor to my friends.
- On a whim I joined an educational oriented design content, where I ended up being one of the few finalists. I was hooked. I created a consulting company and moved out to SF to make products.
- Initially, I did what I knew which was coding but I realized I needed to know marketing when my iphone app flopped. Ever since then, I’ve been getting closer and closer to product management.
- Most recently at SolutionSet, I have managed the design, development and rollout of a new rewards website for JCPenney. I am also working on projects at Google EDU and YouTube. I can go into that if you’d like
- Outside of work, I do a bit of coding for fun for a machine learning website called Kaggle. I help my friends out with their crazy startup ideas.
- I’m looking for a role as a product manager at a comapny with a lot of product breadth where I can grow and learn from the best.
Why do you want to work here?
Google has made many products that have defined the internet
- Google search
- Gmail
- Google Reader
- Google News
- Google Docs
What really sold me was when I watched a video of the google self driving car.
I had heard a lot of great things about working for google from my friends that work there and I’ve gotten a chance to experience it first hand by visiting myself.
Why should we hire you?
Three things make me a great fit for this position
- I’ve had two years in a product position at my current company, creating 6 new products
- As a CS major with deep quant skills from a quantatative hedge fund and machine learning skills I am a unique candidate
- Third, I want to be here because I want a Google self-driving car and hoping that if I work here I’ll be able to get one before anyone else.
Why are you leaving your current job?
My company got acquired last year by a large public company. It’s started changing a lot and things have gotten very beurocratic.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
- I’ve been getting involved a lot lately with machine learning. It all started with a coursera class I took in April and then I went to an all night hackathon.
- I’ve been also involved lately with planning a bit for a wedding I have coming up.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I’d love to be the lead PM for an emerging technology commericalization initiative like google glass or the google self driving car. I’m particularly interested in transformative technology, the kind that comes around every few decades and really transforms society like google search.
What are your strenghts and weaknesses?
Strenghts
I’m scrappy and find creative ways to get things done. For example, several weeks ago when one of our business units tried to dump 2 weeks of work on us I proposed a work barter where we did 1 day of their work and they did a day of ours. In the end, what would have taken us took them a day.
I value indepent thought, so I tend to not micromanage. I prefer to let other people get the satisifaction out of solving problems. Though, sometimes I walk them throuhg the steps
Very strong technically - I learned to code when I was in third grade, learned basic at fifrth grade and c in sixth. Was maknig video games in seventh grade.
Weaknesses
Tend to be very direct, which is probably from my east coast up bringing. I dont’ beat aronud the bush. This has rubbed people the wrong way sometimes. I have learned to be a bit more aware of sensitive peope in the room when I am speaking.
I find my productivity drops when I have way to much or way to little on my plate. I’ve learned to deal with this by taking on new tasks and delegating ro saying pushing things back when things get to crazy.
Hesistant asking others for help. I’ll work on my own forever before I ask for help. Now I ask how much time I’d save asking for help.
At SolutionSet, tell me about a time your demonstrated leadership/influence
Nugget
Sure, let me tell you about the time I implemeted an unpopular project estimation tool for development
Sitation
team at solutionset is pretty orthodox. They believe in estimating design deliverables, they never believe estimating work for development is worthwhile. In my projects, I realized because of this they were delays rolling out features. This was causing us to lose thousands of dollars and for clients to be unhappy.
Alternative
Pad all estimtes with a crazy high amount 75%
Not estimate
Action
After a particularly bad suprise estimation, I had our developers put a time estimate next to each ticket in JIRA. Everytime their estimate changed, I had them update the estimate. This worked suprisingly well.
Result
These developers were sold on the process. Many other managers within solutionset have asked me how to do this and have started doing this on their own.
Nugget
Time I convinced the CEO of Loggly not compete directly with Splunk
Situation
Loggly was developing a new interface that had similar features as splunk. Wanted to just pile on feature after feature, risking the product redesign get delayed or perhaps never built
Alternatives
Do what he wanted, risking the project
Keep the designs simple, ignoring his feedback
Action
Reminded him that spunk dominates the complex data analysis category. Spunk has a perfect spot for small to mid-size companies looking for very easy to use data analysis, without hiring specialists.
Result
He agreed and the product was launched. They have been able to raise 10s more millions of dollars with this new product.
At SolutionSet, tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork
Nuggest
The time I bartered time with Epsilon
Situation
Epsilon was short of time and didn’t realize they needed to get something out very fast. They placed that on our lap when we had a release the next day. It would have taken us at least five days to finish.
Result
Rather than do that, I told R.A. to have his team implement that change in our code. However, we would do a second part of the request he hadn’t asked for that we realize would not take us very long.
At SolutionSet, tell me about some successes you ahve had
Nugget
Let me tell you about the time I pitched a client some new business and won the pitch before telling my boss
Situation
An old client was asking me who would be qualified to convert their video formats froma proprietary one to a regular one supported by a standard video player
Alternatives
I could find a list of companies specialized in this area, which there weren’t that I knew of
I could tell them it was a bad idea
Action
I took a meeting with our tech lead and asked what we could do, even if we didn’t know how to do it. He mentioned some software that could be used for video encoding called ffmpeg.
We set up a meeting and proposed several variations of this idea. I wrote up a contract for $60k and had it signed the next day.
Result
My boss was pleasantly surprised when he found out. THe project was also a success.
At SolutionSet, tell me about some challenges you have faced
Nugget
Getting many teams all aligned on project
At SolutionSet, tell me about some mistakes or failures you have overcome
Nugget
Let me tell you about the time I assumed everyone was on the same page for a certain project (JCP)
Extracuricularly, tell me a time you demonstrated leadership/influence
Nugget
Let me tell you about the time I lead the team to 2nd place finish by ignoring the advice of the judges
Extracurricularly, tell me a time you have demonstrated teamwork
Nugget
Let me tell you about the time I lead the team to victory in health 2.0
Extracurricularly, tell me about a time you have demonstrated successes
Nugget
Let me tell you about the time I worked for the Mozilla jetpack for learning design challenge
Extra curricularly, tell me about a time you have overcome challenges
Nugget
Let me tell you about the time I had to convince my team to follow me
Extracuricularly, tell meabout a time you have overcome mistakes/failures
Nugget
Let me tell you about the iphone app
