Director Interview Questions in United States
"When applying for a position as a director, be prepared to have your leadership skills and judgement tested by many case studies. These scenarios help employers understand what kind of leader you will be for a team or department at their company, so confidence, quick thinking, and examples of how you have fixed similar problems in the past will be highly advantageous towards receiving an offer."
The manager of component 'A' says his functionality is more important than that of component 'B.' The manager of component 'B' says his is more important than that of component 'A.' You can only implement one A or B, but not both - which do you choose to implement.
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The key question to ask is definition of "IMPORTANT". Is it important to the managers (ego equation), important to the end consumer or important for Amazon. The first one needs to be thrown out immediately and the others must be quantified based on achievability, impact on end user and ROI. Less
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I would say whichever is more valuable to customer & gives competitive advantage to Amazon. Less
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Agreed. Need to drill into what "important" means. Great catch My guess is that Amazon was looking to quantify/define "important" from the customer perspective. Less
Tell me how you would scale a social media software platform?
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Try to define "scale", ask for clarifications. Are we trying to scale to more users or to more ad providers? Are there any current bottlenecks? What is the goal here? How about we improve the experience by providing more relevant ads? etc... Less
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Its such a tricky question. I guess its by the analytic we use to know the page views and all.. Less
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I didn't have a good answer for this one.
Suppose you are working on a project with an original scope of a few months and you are told that you instead now have a few days -- how would you handle it?
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I'd ask 'why'? Something radically changed since the last time this was discussed. Understanding what it was that changed is critical to determining the best course of action. Adding manpower, reducing scope, working 24/7, or pushing back might all be reasonable (or horrible) solutions. By first understanding the (new) need, you can then develop a solution. Less
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Depends: Who is telling me this? What stage is the project in on the project life cycle? Review these factors in light of the impacts, set change management process and communication plan. There are no cookie cutter approached - each project is unique. Less
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I would say evaluate the overall impacts and risks then communicate it with your sponsor (customer). Let he/she to decide then document it. Less
How do you convince a CIO of a utility to care about energy efficiency?
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He cares because if he can lower the system peak number, he can lesson the amount of spinning reserves he must have in place, whixh in effect is stranded capital. Less
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CIO cares since as a company executive he needs to work with his customers (operating unit executives) to cut costs and increase revenues. By providing a solution that mines data to assist customer to save energry usage - the CIO is prioviding a solution for the utility to flatten its energy demand curve. Less
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Simple. You demonstrate a cost savings analysis comparing efficient energy use to inefficient energy use. Use a graph of the inefficient use, compare to an efficient use, then run assign the value. That is just one way. This of course assumes that the inefficient use cost more then the cost to correct the problem. But if you do make the changes you can leverage the changes into a PR piece and get a double benefit (efficient use and a "look at us going green!" piece.) Less
How far apart is the hour and minute hand a 3:15?
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No matter what time of the day, the minute and hour hand are always touching in the center of the clock face. Less
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7.5 degrees
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360 degrees on the clock. Each number is 360/12 = 30 degrees apart from one another. at 3:15, the minute hand is at 3 while the hour hand is 15/60 = 1/4 away from 3. So (1/4) * 30 = 30/4 = 7 + 2/4 = 7.5 degrees Less
How would you explain story points to a team who's new to Agile/Scrum?
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Time vs effort.. teams get hung up on time based estimates. And not about the amount of effort it's going to take to accomplish a task/user story. Less
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It’s about demonstrating it to them and comparing the efficacy compare to other frameworks via dissecting a story vertically to the smallest size possible. Less
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I said I would talk to them about t-shirt sizing and try several ways to help them understand that story estimation has little to nothing to do with time, rather effort. I also explained that this was a challenging topic for a new team. Less
You notice that adwords revenue for a certain word has dropped in Italy for the last 30 days. How do you go about determining why that has happened?
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Adword Revenue : No. of impressions * Click Thru Rate * Cost Per Click Anyone of the three parameters could decline to have an overall reduction in revenue. No. of Impressions could go down if a. The internet usage has fallen for some socio-culturaal reasons in Italy b. The usage of Google search has reduced because of may be some competitor applicaton launch or some major marketing promotion activities c. Some major technical issues has come up may be in the Google servers which is resulting in higher latency in Google Search applications resulting in reduced usage Click Thru Rate might have gone down 1 Major shift is usage clusters Keywords used have changed resulting in changed search behavior where in people are less prone to click thru. 2 Some technical issues like adds not displayed properly Same major flaw in random add picking might have got introduced 3. Some recent layout change has been there and peope are yet to get accustomed with the changed layout Reduced CPC: 1. People are spending less on Adwords and hence bidding less 2 Due to the keyword change, the new cluster CPC is much lesser. Less
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1. Determine the amount of decrease in month over month percentages, and make sure this isn't a trend. 2. Assuming we've seen similar decreases in conversions and clicks, 30 days is a month's time. Let's say this is in August, when the entire country uses the majority of their average of 42 vacation days per year. That's a factor. 3. Given you've said decreases in revenue and assuming all click and conversion data remained the same month over month, we may look for broken dynamic revenue variable conversion codes on the page source. Was there a site update? Less
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This is a test to see how you think on your feet.
In an environment of layoffs and restructuring, how do you keep your team motivated?
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Be open and honest if their roles are in jeopardy. Understand their concerns and answer their questions as best you can. If you do not know, say so. Keep them busy, and involved in important work. Less
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Mo on g ok ok lfNikki
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Stay positive, and focus on the work at hand. Keeping busy on important work helps people realize what they are doing is important. An ideal mind is the devil's.... well, you know the old saying. Be sure the physical environment is welcoming. In summer, raise the blinds, clean the common areas of papers and clutter. You will be amazed how much better things look when you take 10 short minutes a day to make the physical environment look better. The sun is out, blue skies, and maybe it's not so bad here. Let people vent. If you are not holding 1-on-1 meetings, then start. Hear people out. Be honest about what you can talk about. Don't sugar coat anything, but give those more junior to you some context and a bigger view. Sure some people will be laid off, but most will remain. Opportunity to do different things will become available. Sure you will work harder, but you will learn, growth, and build your reputation for having a level head in complex times. Lastly, have a plan. Know what you will do as a manager if you have to layoff 1,2 or 3 people. Know how the work will move around. This will allow you act quickly and decisively should things come to that. Having a manager who looks in charge because they already thought it through will go a long way. Less
"name the 3 types matrices used to manage risk in a project using information taken from PMBOK (Project Management Book of Knowledge) "If you have 5 projects running concurrently, describe a single matrix that would easily show how each of those projects were doing"
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Why is an Agile Project Manager interview based on the PMBOK? That's a really, really bad sign. :) Less
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For the second question, I'd probably use either a cost/schedule variance chart... since you can't assume the same budget or schedule for any of the projects, variance against plan would likely be the best way to go. Less
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For both of these questions, I told them if there was a single correct answer, I didn't know it...but I walked them through how I would handle each question. Less
Imagine you make a very complicated calculation in excel for a client who is going to make a decision. After you reviewed it a couple of times you notice you are going to save the client $10 million in taxes. You give it to your senior and your partner, who review your work. They agree on your calculation and tell the client about the tax savings and the meeting to finalize the transaction is tomorrow. It's 9 o'clock at night and you are finalizing the paperwork, and you suddenly realize you made a careless mistake on excel and instead of putting a minus, you put a plus, so the client is not going to save $10 million, but is going to owe $10 million. What do you do? How do you handle the situation?
3 Answers↳
Firstly, tell your partner and senior about it. After that, finalize the paperwork and bring it to your client's house. Talk to your client and just tell your client that you've made a mistake and tell your client the correct info Less
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Start looking for a new job as soon as possible.
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Answer: Everyone makes mistakes and you have to acknowledge it in a humble way. Tell the senior or the partner of the mistake as soon as possible, so they can help you minimize the damage. Less