Amazon

Give me a situation in which it took you asking why five times to get to the root cause.

Reporting tool for client was not reflecting the counts from a data file

Tell me about a time you wouldn't compromise on achieving a great outcome when others felt something was good enough. What was the situation?

SOP for kick off calls

Tell me about a time where someone has openly challenged you. How did you handle this feedback?

Vendor pricing negotiation. demanding payment for bad data

Tell me about a time when you have worked against tight deadlines and didn't have the time to consider all options before making a decision. How much time did you have? What approach did you take?

Vendor selection. Became about when came back first.

1. Tell me about time you were working on an initiative or goal and saw an opportunity to do something much bigger than the initial focus.

o Primary PM for 4 major accounts - generate SOPs for these clients

1. Tell me about a time you made a hard decision to sacrifice short term gain for a longer term goal.

o Project closed on time, but when reviewing data the team identified a few respondents with questionable data. I could deliver this data and close project on time, or flag for potential removal and keep project open longer. Ended up flagging the respondents, client was grateful to have the data removed, and had no problem keeping the study open longer to replace the data.

Give me an example of a time when you were able to deliver an important project under a tight deadline. What sacrifices did you have to make to meet the deadline? How did they impact the final deliverables?

BioVid - staying late and organizing team to get project launched

Tell me about a time a customer wanted one thing, but you felt they needed something else. How did you approach the situation, what were your actions and what was the end result?

Client wanted to launch a 90 minute online survey. For reference, that is an extremely long survey with a low response rate and high respondent fatigue (respondents quitting partway through survey). I reviewed their proposal, and suggested instead we launch a qualitative approach with in-person over the phone interviews. While it would result in fewer completes from a cost perspective, the breadth and depth of the data would be far greater, and respondents were more inclined to participate OTP than online. The client was receptive to the idea, we re-formatted their survey to a more in-person friendly format, recruited and scheduled their 10 in person interviews. Ultimately, the client collected quality data from a handful of quality respondents under budget and on time.

Can you tell me about a specific metric you have used to identify a need for a change in your department? Did you create the metric or was it already available? How did this and other information influence the change?

Creating better communication process between Ops & CS (stem from 5 star rating system). adding programming to project stream

Tell me about the most innovative thing you've done and why you thought it was innovative (can also probe with: That sounds more evolutionary than revolutionary - tell me about something you've done you feel was truly revolutionary? Ask for one or two additional examples to see if it's a one off or pattern.)

Creating better communication process between ops & CS

Give an example of a time you requested additional funding/budget to complete a project. Why was it needed? Did you try to figure out another approach? Did you get the additional resources? Why or why not?

Custom recruit

Tell me about a time when you have been unsatisfied with the status quo. What did you do to change it? Were you successful?

Developed appropriate timeline template for sales

Tell me about a time when you made a bad decision and the learning from the experience enabled you to make a good decision later. What did you learn that you were able to apply?

Didn't set up a call to clarify questions between client & programmer. Since then have established SOP for communicating changes involving a change log and a call if more than one email clarification has to be sent

give me an example of a calculated risk that you have taken where speed was critical. What was the situation and how did you handle it? What steps did you take to mitigate the risk? What was the outcome?

End of field, needed a small handful of completes. Brought on vendor despite potentially not covering PM fees

Give me an example of a goal you've had where you wish you had done better. What was the goal and how could you have improved on it?

Feedback loop for PCs

Tell me about a time where you not only met a goal but considerably exceeded expectations. How were you able to do it? What challenges did you have to overcome?

Goal: become primary SPM for 1 new account per year. Currently SPM for 4 major accounts. Identified strategic accounts that would benefit from an experienced SPM, talked with AEs and Sales, displayed my general knowledge of the accounts Identifying how each specific client prefers things

Tell me about a goal that you set that took a long time to achieve or that you are still working towards. How do you keep focused on the goal given the other priorities you have?

Goal: build strong relationships with my clients.

Describe a situation where you made an important business decision without consulting your manager. What was the situation and how did it turn out?

Launching a partner before financial approval. I calculated the risks by assessing our gm for the project after bringing them on, and it outweighed the potential loss of the client if we didn't get them brought on. It was the right call, we launched the vendor, and the next day the financial side was approved.

Give an example of when you had to make an important decision and had to decide between moving forward or gathering more information. What did you do? What information is necessary for you to have before acting?

Launching a project on a tight timeline before having all partner sample lined up

Describe the most significant, continuous improvement project that you have led. What was the catalyst to this change and how did you go about it?

Learning programming language

Tell me about a time you didn't have enough resources to do something you felt was important but found a creative way to get it done anyway. What drove you to seek out creative solutions?

Learning programming language

Tell me about time you had to learn something outside your comfort zone in order to drive results for your organization or to adapt to a change in the market, organization or other catalyst.

Learning programming language

Tell me about a time you had significant, unanticipated obstacles to overcome in achieving a key goal. Were you eventually successful?

Most recently, the outbreak of Coronavirus has impacted the response rates of our general physicians in China. I have seen a significant decrease in response rate, causing deliverables to not be met. My current study is fielding far slower than expected due to the lack of available doctors in the area with time to participate. Once this problem was identified, I immediately explained the situation to the client. I outlined the deliverables that we were not going to meet (deadline & number of completes) and worked with sales to re-launch the project at a later date once RRs level out. The client appreciated the transparency and has kept the project open, fielding slowly. I am monitoring the situation closely.

Provide an example of a time when you have had to make a difficult decision under pressure and then defend and justify it. Was it the right decision?

Negotiating with vendors

when do you decide to go along with the group decision even if you agree

New PO process

tell me about a time that you strongly disagreed with your manager on something you deemed to be very important to the business. What was it about and how did you handle it?

New PO system

Tell me about a time you were trying to understand a problem on your team and you had to go down several layers to figure it out. Who did you talk with and what information proved most valuable? How did you use that information to help solve the problem?

PO wasn't approved

Tell me about a time you made a difficult decision and how you knew it was the right solution (probe on how they evaluated the options, if they received input, what data they reviewed, etc.)

Preferred vendor pricing much higher than other vendors. Didn't want to take work away from a vendor who we do have a strong partnership with, but in the best interest of the client & company, I found vendor who could do the job for a lower rate. I made the decision to confront the preferred vendor about costs, and they were able to come down on their pricing to meet the other vendor.

Tell me about a time the business gained something because you persisted for a length of time. Why were you so determined? How did it turn out?

Re-structuring PM team

Tell me about a time when you generated a creative solution to a problem or project without requiring additional resources. What was the problem? What was the solution and how did you come up with it?

SOPs for kick off calls

Give an example when you submitted a good idea to your manager and he/she did not take action on it? How did you handle it? What was the end outcome

Suggesting the PM restructuring

Give me an example of how you have helped save costs or eliminate waste within your operation.

Template for programming

Tell me about a piece of direct feedback you recently gave to a colleague. How did he or she respond? How do you like to receive feedback from coworkers or managers?

Told a coworker's manager she was doing a great job on a project she was helping me with

Describe a time where you felt really strongly about something but ultimately lost the argument. How hard did you press the issue? What was your approach after you lost the argument?

moving tickets from PMs to PCs.

Tell me about a time when you had to balance the needs of the customer vs the needs of the business. how did you manage this situation

replacing bad completes at no cost to client

tell me about a time when you linked two or more problems together and identified an underlying issue? Were you able to find a solution?

respondents not getting paid by complete in our system. they werent reaching the landing page of the survey

describe a time when you needed the cooperation of a peer or peers who were resistant to what you were trying to do. What did you do? What was the outcome?

stay late to deliver client link

1. Tell me about a time when you took on something significant outside your area of responsibility. Why was it important? What was the outcome?

training remote PMs

Give me an example of a time you used customer feedback to drive improvement or innovation. What was the situation and what action did you take?

I received positive feedback from a client on an agenda I generated for a kick off call. They liked how I organized the information in a clear, concise way. I shared the feedback and the template for the agenda with the rest of the CS team with a note on how effective the client found it. PMs now utilize this same template for all kick off calls

Tell me about a decision for which data and analysis weren't sufficient to provide the right course and you had to rely on your judgment and instincts. Give me two to three examples. They don't have to be big strategic decisions - could be big or small.

1. Reviewing projects before they launch and providing recommendations on how to better field before launching 2. Deciding which vendor to bring on to a project despite PO approval process 3. Changing the scope of a project early on because you know the current approach will be problematic (long screener, high dropout rate, moved questions to the main portion of the q're)

Tell me about a time when you had to analyze facts quickly, define key issues, and respond immediately to a situation. What was the outcome?

A project with a short field time launched and immediately into fielding I noticed it was not going as expected. I paused the study, pulled a data file and identified an issue with the screening criteria that was causing qualified respondents to term out. I notified the client, provided the data, and outlined the solution to the problem: adjust the screening criteria, fix the link, and re-launch the survey after re-inviting the terminated respondents. The client was appreciative of the proactivness, accepted the change, and we fixed and re-launched. The project ended up being successful due to the quick analysis of data and adjustment accordingly.

Can you give me an example of when you've been able to see around the corner to meet a customer need or delight a customer with a solution or product they didn't yet know they needed/wanted?

I am the SPM for a high-priority account who does $1-$1.5m in annual business with Sermo. They run tracking studies to test names of different pharmaceutical products. These surveys are often extremely similar with only minor changes. The programming, however was being done from scratch each time, taking 2-3 days to program and translate. I evaluated the different types of q'res we were programming, identified the areas that were often changed from survey to survey, and developed a template that the client could use to customize their survey from project to project. Then, I had our programming team program this template, so that all they had to do when a new project came through would be to make minor edits/insertions to the programming. This cut down programming costs and timing, and reduced errors and back and forth communication between client/programming/translations team.

Give me an example of when you have to make an important decision in the absence of good data because there just wasn't any. What was the situation and how did you arrive at your decision? Did the decision turn out to be the correct one? Why or why not?

Occasionally, I'll work with a client who is very new to the market research world. They may not even know exactly what they want. They rely on me to provide expertise on targeting, fielding, q;re layout, etc. I had a client who wasn't sure what approach to MR they wanted to take. They knew they wanted to research a new product, but were unsure whether a quant or qual approach would be better. Without a lot of information on who this client was or what there larger MR needs were, I had to make some assumptions on the best approach for their study. I suggested the client start with a qual "pretest approach" whereby we schedule 4 in-depth interviews where the researcher had the opportunity to get real time feedback on their survey. Then, I allowed the client to make changes to their researching approach, I programmed their quant link, and we launched a quantitative project for more hard number data. The client was thrilled with this mixed research approach, and I was satisfied that I could provide their data.

Building trust can be difficult to achieve at times. Tell me about how you have effectively built trusting working relationships with others on your team.

Primary PM for 4 major accounts - Dermasensor: worked closely with sales team to develop plan of action for high value project. After months of working on project, I launched it successfully

To try to meet the high expectations of our customers, we sometimes promise more than we can deliver. Tell me about a time when you overcommitted yourself or your company. How did you resolve the issue

Promising timeline & not meeting it

Tell me about a time you (and your team if Manager) were driving toward a goal and were more than half way to the objective when you realized it may not be the best or right goal or may have unintended consequences. What was the situation and what did you do? [testing for achieving the right result versus driving goal for sake of goal achievement. May want follow up questions regarding to determine if the person was willing to take hit on goal attainment to achieve the right result and test long term versus short term thinking.]

Qual work

Walk me through a big problem or issue in your organization that you helped to solve. How did you become aware of it? What information did you gather, what information was missing and how did you fill the gaps? Did you do a post mortem analysis and if you did what did you learn?

Re-structuring PM team

Give an example where you refused to compromise your standards around quality/customer service, etc. Why did you feel so strongly about the situation? What were the consequences? The result?

Soft launching a project - a method I employ to ensure that we don't sent out too much sample to a potentially broken link or before a client has a chance to adjust the criteria to better target the correct respondents. It consists of launching a project aiming for 5-10% of the overall quota. Sometimes, clients are in a rush and want me to fully launch a project from the start. However, doing so could cause even greater delays should the launch identify a problem. Thus, I refuse to compromise this standard because it is in the client's best interest.

Give me an example of when you took an unpopular stance in a meeting with peers and your leader and you were the outlier. What was it, why did you feel strongly about it, and what did you do?

Staying late to launch a project. Team didnt want to set an example, but I wanted to meet client's needs. worked late to deliver project

What measures have you personally put in place to ensure performance improvement targets and standards are achieved?

Success is measured by closing a project on time and on/under budget

describe a time when you significantly contributed to improving morale and productivity on your team. What were the underlying problems and their causes? How did you prevent them from negatively impacting the team int eh future?

Thank you email to entire team after hard project. Emailed managers to recognize efforts of their team. Kept spirits high in email stream

Tell me about a time when you had to make tradeoffs between quality and cost. How did you weigh the options? What was the result?

Tight timelines - can deliver unchecked work in order to meet deadlines. The trade off is there could still be an issue, but the benefit is client is able to review

Tell me about a time you had to get something done with half or two thirds of the resources you thought you'd need for the project or initiative.

Using only internal sample when partner sample was lined up (saved time and money)

tell me about a problem that required in-depth thought and analysis. How did you know you were focusing on the right things?

come back to this one

Tell me about an error in judgment you made in the last year or two, what it was and the impact of it.

not checking PC work on an important project

1. People often say the simplest solution is the best. Tell me about a particular complex problem you solved with a simple solution.

o Developed appropriate timeline template for sales

1. Give me an example of how you have changed the direction or view of a specific function/department and helped them embrace a new way of thinking? Why was a change needed?

o Developed appropriate timeline template for sales. - Getting sales to re-evaluate how POs are generated

1. Describe a challenging problem or situation in which the usual approach was not going to work. Why were you unable to take the usual approach? What alternative approach did you take? Was it successful?

o Difficult recruit among a hard-to-teach target (interventional cardiologists) from a client list. Typical recruit format would not work, so I employed a custom recruitment strategy using our phone team to look up respondents and call them directly for their participation. It was successful, the efforts yielded an additional 10 completes which went a long way with the client.

1. Tell me about a time you looked at a key process that was working well and questioned whether it was still the right one? What assumptions were you questioning and why? Did you end up making a change to the process?

o In my previous job, I managed the purchasing of promotional items. I tracked the budget and found cost saving opportunities. I brought these to my manager's attention, and we ended up adjusting our purchasing plan towards a more cost-efficient approach. Switched from purchasing books quarterly to yearly, found an area to store them, and saved the company. I purchased on average 120 books per year, 30 per quarter at $15, which totaled $1,800 per year. When I bulk ordered 120 at one time, the price dropped to $12, and I only spent $1,440, saving $360 on that item alone.

1. Tell me about a time you took a big risk - what was the risk, how did you decide to do it and what was the outcome?

o Launching a project where I knew we'd be short internally but launched before we had a addtl vendors lined up. I took a calculated risk because I knew we had built in enough GM to cover vendors, but without their quotes and feas, it was a bit of a risk. We couldn't delay launch however, so I launched the project internally and quickly worked behind the scenes to get vendors lined up and poised to launch. Ultimately the project was a success, all vendors came on and delivered, and we closed the project on time, and under budget

1. Give an example of a tough or critical piece of feedback you received. What was it and what did you do about it?

o Learning programming language

1. Give me an example of a significant professional failure. What did you learn from this situation?

o Learning programming language

1. Now Tell me about a time you took a big risk and it failed. What did you learn? What would you do differently?

o Managing a big project with a new client. I wanted to make a good first impression, so I reassured the client we could close in 2 weeks. It ended up taking closer to 3 weeks. The client was not happy, and I realized I should have been a lot more conservative in my estimations. I take that experience as a good reminder to set realistic expectations and keep clients in the loop

1. Give an example of a creative idea you had that proved really difficult to implement. What was the idea and what made it difficult to implement? Was it successful?

o Porter Novelli Project

1. Tell me about a time you were able to make something significantly simpler for customers. What drove you to implement this change?

o Primary PM for 4 major accounts

1. Give me an example of an idea you had that was strongly opposed. Why was there so much resistance? How did you handle the negative feedback?

o Re-structuring PM team

1. How do you drive adoption for your vision/ideas? How do you know how well your idea or vision has been adopted by other teams or partners? Give a specific example highlighting one of your ideas.

o SOP for kick off calls

1. Tell me about a time when you have worked to improve the quality of a product / service / solution that was already getting good customer feedback? Why did you think it needed continued improvement?

o Template for programming

1. Tell me about an out-of-the-box idea you had or decision you made that had a big impact on your business.

o Template for programming

1. Tell me about a time when you have been faced with a challenge where the best way forward or strategy to adopt was not "clear cut" (i.e. there were a number of possible solutions). How did you decide the best way forward?

o Under a tight timeline, link wasn't going to be ready. Could do a partial delivery. Could deliver unchecked link and have client QA at same time, or could delay fielding by delivering fully checked link late. I decided to deliver un-checked link to client on time. I came to this conclusion after talking with the programming team and the client, making sure both sides understood the implications of this, and had agreement from both parties.

1. Tell me about a time you made a significant mistake. What led you to making the wrong decision? What would you have done differently in retrospect?

overly ambitious about our timeline for a new client. extended field by 1 week

Give me an example of a time where you were not able to meet a commitment to a team member. what was the commitment and what prevented you from meeting it? what was the outcome and what did you learn from it?

set up and launched a project for a team member who was busy but did it past a deadline that I was unaware of. Now I ask "when do you need it by?"

Tell me about a time you had to communicate a big change in direction for which you anticipated people would have a lot of concerns. How did you handle questions and/or resistance? Were you able to get people comfortable with the change?

updating the PO process - filling in the sales & PC Team

Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty for a customer. Why did you take the action you did? What was the outcome?

working late to launch a project

Give me an example of your most difficult customer interaction and how you worked through it. What was the outcome?

working with a client brand new to market research. have to hold their hand step by step

Most of us at one time or another have felt frustrated or impatient when dealing with customers. Can you tell us about a time when you felt this way and how you dealt with it? When do you think it's appropriate to push back or say no to an unreasonable customer request?

working with clients who are brand new to market research or sermo's practices