Questions Flashcards
(14 cards)
Why do you want this job?
Passionate about the role
- responsibility & challenge
- working with people from diverse backgrounds
- life long learning
Big fan of Accenture
- innovative, creative, improving
- diverse clients - challenges & growth opts
- great culture & mngt
- great employees, diverse backgrounds
- great learning opts
Why do you want to work for us?
Big fan of Accenture
- innovative, creative, improving
- diverse clients - challenges & growth opts
- great culture & mngt
- great employees, diverse backgrounds
- great learning opts
It is about them and what they need and how I can fulfil that need / help them.
Maybe add about values and how Acc values match mine.
Why did you leave your previous company?
Short answer
- enjoyed working for BF - opportunities, growth, great legal industry insights
- go back to core PM -
- current opts didn’t enable me desired growth and role, transition not possible in short/mid term
- the market is good, lots of great oppts out there
- fascinated about the disruption of FS & banking in recent years with all start-up initiatives and products.
See this role as a great opt to know more about the industry and help transform / grow the FS company I would be working for in Accenture.
Why did you leave your previous company?
Long answer
- Enjoyed working in my previous company. Learned and grew a lot. Helped drive lots of different initiatives, helped a lot in other teams.
- Wanted to go back into project manager role - gained great experience in start-up & agile environment, did my PMP certification and coaching certification
- Current opportunities in the company didn’t enable me desired growth and role
- Market is great, so I decided to focus on finding a new job in the desired role
- I also find it fascinating how financial services got disrupted in recent years and want to know more about it and help transform / grow the FS company I would be working for in Accenture.
What do you know about the company?
- Accenture stands for Accent on the future
- Fortune 500 Company - it’s in the 500 largest companies by Fortune magazine
- Founded in 1989
- Originally part of Arthur Anderson - big auditing company
- IPO in 2001 - went public in 2001
- Incorporated in Ireland in 2009
- Current divisions/lines of business include strategy & consulting, interactive, technology and operations
- About the lines of business - add
- Massive global organization, with more than 600k employees
- Great network of clients across more than 20 different industries
- Leader in innovation and creativity
- Great learning & upskilling opportunities
- Great & diverse teams and skill sets and great culture
- Supportive leadership
- Great incentives
- About the banking and FS industry - add details
- Add from 10k report
What are your weaknesses?
An area for growth for me in the past was:
- I Spent too much time on email and checking email. Over the time I’ve learned to bucket my email time and only check it at specific hours so that for the rest of the time I can focus on more relevant project work and getting things done.
- Getting in front of the groups and presenting. And the only way to grow for me in this area is to get in front of the people and present. Over the years I’ve had many presentations, trainings, meetings where I had to present. I’ve intentionally put myself in front of people to present and at the same time I also took some courses on public speaking (toastmasters) and online facilitation so this is definitely an area I’ve grown a lot in the last couple of years.
- Add a few more examples
What are your biggest accomplishments?
PROFESSIONAL
- Streamlined the application process for a recurring project
- increased the productivity of the team in my previous job
PRIVATE
- Camino
- I participated in a writing challenge - the challenge was to post an atomic essay (short form writing, up to 250 words) every day for the next 30 days on Twitter.
How did you manage risks?
- Strong risk management from the get-go
- Constantly monitor risks, create risk logs, assign responsible persons (usually on task levels)
- Before starting the proper planning, have a risk plan in place - starting with charter - prepare a high-level RAID log, moving to planning
Process:
- Identify risks (think of scope, schedule, costs, competition, governance, legal, operations, technology… what could go wrong)
- Analyze in terms of impact and probability
- Prioritize based on analysis
- Prepare risk responses for high priority risks (avoid, mitigate, transfer…)
- Plan contingency reserves for foreseen risks
- Plan mngt reserves for unforeseen risks (can go up to 30% on IT projects)
Tell me about a time you had a risk escalation?
Hazard (unforeseen and unplanned event) - Terrorist attack
You can’t predict it, but it’s important how you react to it to reduce the impact of it! - plan for recovery
SITUATION: 5 team members were supposed to be sent to training when a terrorist attack in Paris happened the night before the departure. The problem was that this activity had a dependency, which meant we couldn’t proceed with certain work if training was not done. Risk on the schedule and costs.
TASK: recover the damage, if possible, re-evaluate the project, recovery plan and take necessary action
ACTION:
- 15000 E potential lost money - Re-negotiated agreements with vendors - we lost only travel money (2000 E instead)
- Re-scheduled the tasks- to work on not dependent tasks and push the training and dependent activities further down the timeline
- Made a recovery plan proposition
- Informed the sponsor of the event, severity of impact and asked for budget increase for lost travel costs (denied).
RESULT:
- Managed to deliver on-time, scope and budget. The only risk that stated after balancing the estimates was the risk of going over budget. Luckily there was an activity that costs us a bit less than it was planned and we also made some more sensible costs decision after the risk event, so we managed to get budget back on track by the time we ended the project.
LEARNING:
Tell me about the time you made a mistake.
Forgot to include one stakeholder into funding application
SITUATION: Forgot to include one stakeholder in funding application which resulted for them in 5k EUR loss.
TASK: to inform the stakeholder about the mistake, consequences and possible solution.
ACTIONS:
- Explored why it came to this situation, what happened > missed out as it was delivered late, another team member received it and before packing up all documentation for 400 stakeholders, I didn’t check the for any new documentation, took full responsibility
- Called the sponsor / ministry for education, if there is something we could do - not at this moment. But there might be a repeated tender as a lot of eligible candidates fell out for funding for not checking properly the funding requirements and they need to spend the EU money.
- Thought about and made a plan how to deliver the information to the client
- Called the client - Upset, Spoke calmly, listened to them speaking, understand their point of view, explained what happened, took full responsibility, explained possible solutions
RESULT:
- Lucky enough the tender was repeated so we were able to include them in the next funding round, got the money
- Immediately called the company. Explained that they are able to apply again
- Improved collaboration - took more of our students for internship, helped us with different process improvements initiatives related to internships
LEARNING
- Always go the extra mile for the clients you’re working on and strive to improve relationships.
Tell me about a time you handle a difficult situation?
Situation: noticed that one of my top-performing members started delaying the work, it wasn’t yet so critical, but I just wanted to proactively handle the situation as I knew she’ll be delivering a key piece of work at some later stage of the project and wanted for her to be back on track asap. .
Actions:
- scheduled informal meeting, invited her for lunch,
- explained what I was observing, asked her what’s going on, listened actively, showed empathy. She said she has some medical problems, and that she worries a lot, but it’s not that critical,
- I’ve asked her how we can accommodate her, so that some of the pressure would be taken off her. She asked if she could come late to work at certain 2 days a week.
- Asked her about her resourcing elsewhere, if she’s on tight timelines, she said that other projects were quiet.
- Spoke to her manager, explained the situation, and he agreed to proceed as suggested.
Result
- Natalija’s health improved,
- also she came to old tracks in about a month.
- Also the overall climate in the team improved, because i guess the team realized that we’re here for each other and we’re only human, and if you have a safe environment, where you’re not going to be attached or heavily judged, then sometime it makes sense to share what’s going on and ask for help.
Learning
- Sometimes it’s good to follow the gut feeling and handle things proactively.
Tell me about a time you handled something proactively?
Situation: noticed that one of my top-performing members started delaying the work, it wasn’t yet so critical, but I just wanted to proactively handle the situation as I knew she’ll be delivering a key piece of work at some later stage of the project and wanted for her to be back on track asap. .
Actions:
- scheduled informal meeting, invited her for lunch,
- explained what I was observing, asked her what’s going on, listened actively, showed empathy. She said she has some medical problems, and that she worries a lot, but it’s not that critical,
- I’ve asked her how we can accommodate her, so that some of the pressure would be taken off her. She asked if she could come late to work at certain 2 days a week.
- Asked her about her resourcing elsewhere, if she’s on tight timelines, she said that other projects were quiet.
- Spoke to her manager, explained the situation, and he agreed to proceed as suggested.
Result
- Natalija’s health improved,
- also she came to old tracks in about a month.
- Also the overall climate in the team improved, because i guess the team realized that we’re here for each other and we’re only human, and if you have a safe environment, where you’re not going to be attached or heavily judged, then sometime it makes sense to share what’s going on and ask for help.
Learning
Sometimes it’s good to follow the gut feeling and handle things proactively.
Tell me about a time you completed a difficult task under pressure.
Situation:
- The previous job - in 2018 - I had to return signed financing contract on a very short timeline.
- Why was this difficult?
- 1) 400 signatories spread across the whole county
- 2) difficult and under pressure? We had to return the signed documentation to the ministry in 7 days after they delivered the documents
Action:
Preparations
- I called the PM at the ministry, if they would be able to inform me a few days in advance when they are going to ship out the documentation so we have time to prepare. I knew this was coming as it was mentioned in the tender documentation.
- Make a plan - how many people to we need, what are the tasks, in what sequence, what materials do we need, what external agreements need to be sorted, what communications & instructions are we going to send the stakeholders
Delivery day / Shipping out day
- Everyone on their positions, sorting and preparing documentation, sending out comms with instructions to stakeholders, getting the trackers ready when the documentation starts coming back and call out the stakeholders which haven’t provided documentation or else they would fall out of funding.
Results:
- Managed to get back all documentation from the stakeholders on time, so we were able to deliver it on time also to the ministry / sponsor so they were able to approve the funding.
- Received a recognition from the ministry for preparing best tender documentation and was invited to give a presentation to all tender applicants on how we do it, what have we improved over the 2 years that the project was going on.
A time you disagreed with your boss
Andreja - re-negotiating the vendor contract and reduce costs by 10%
Happy to share the time when I had the opportunity to share my perspective with my boss.
SITUATION:
- 2017 - PM at SCC
- My boss Andreja, who was a lead of the intercompany training center, asked me to go back to the vendor and re-negotiate the 2018 yearly contract to achieve the 10% reduction in costs, that would be around 200k eur, At this time we were ordering some big machines we had a really costly order in place for the year.
- Difficult vendor delivering training equipment for the company.- always late and really bad customer service
TASK: re-negotiate the 2018 yearly contract to achieve the 10% reduction in costs, that would be around 200k eur
ACTION:
- booked a meeting the next day with my boss to gain more clarity and perspective, who was driving this.
- prepared the questions I want to ask to get the historical and background information
- Listened to her and her perspective, where is this demand coming from, what are the reasons, would she be open to alternatives. I asked her to give me 3 days to make an action plan
- Data gathering - did investigation on the client, it was a difficult client to deal from before, a few of my colleagues were able to confirm that they were always delaying orders and were not responsive.
- Researched the competitors - found 2 companies that would be able to supply the same machines from the same manufacturer. Stepped in touch with them. Asked SME to join the call to evaluate the competitors, customer centricity, price point and perceived delivery to ship and deliver on time. Got the offers from the companies.
- Compiled data into 2 documents - into google sheets and presentation.
- New meeting with my boss. Presented the findings, made recommendations and highlighted benefits and challenges of switching vendors, lastly I also presented the timeline of how we would make the change. My final recommendation was that I could either present this to leadership or let Andreja do it.
RESULTS
- Leadership decided to change the vendor and it went with the first one I recommended.
- Achieved savings were a bit lower than initially anticipated and came down to 100k. In addition, we had no delays with them until the time I was in this role.
LEARNING: what i learned is the importance of listening and asking questions before challenging leadership.
Research and data are critical when you have a disagreement or an opportunity to share your perspective with your boss.
