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What is your most memorable challenge from your past experiences?

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Anonymous

2.4Fair
Most memorable challenges was to get 70% of my team eligible fir Chairman while ending the year achieving top quartile results. My team accepted the challenge, focused on improving customer . satisfaction results and achieved with goals.  The challenge helped my team recognize their true potential which helped them consistently achieve top quartile results results. 
Expert Answer

Anonymous

4.4Exceptional
Situation: In my role as a Product Analytics Team Lead at Zalando Lounge, I noticed that many Product Managers were either hesitant or inconsistent in applying experimentation principles when making product decisions — leading to missed opportunities or unclear results.
Task: I wanted to improve experimentation maturity across the product organization, while also deepening my own knowledge and refreshing areas where I felt rusty. My goal was to create a scalable, engaging learning experience tailored to our product teams as Expeimentation Upskilling.
Action:
  • I initiated and led the creation of a 3-part Experimentation Upskilling Series designed specifically for PMs.
  • To make it relevant and robust, I partnered with the central Experimentation team to co-develop content, align on best practices, and ensure consistency across Zalando.
  • I designed the curriculum to progress from foundations to advanced topics — including hypothesis setting, test design, interpreting statistical significance, and business impact translation.
  • While building the course, I also took the opportunity to refresh and deepen my own understanding, ensuring I could explain concepts in a product-relevant way.
  • The sessions were interactive, with real product examples from Lounge, Q&A blocks, and follow-up materials.
Result: The program received excellent feedback — several PMs mentioned they felt more confident initiating and interpreting A/B tests. As a result, we saw a noticeable improvement in experiment documentation quality and clarity in post-test decision-making. For me personally, it was a growth moment in both content mastery and cross-functional enablement, and I now actively look for more ways to embed analytics education into product workflows.  Also the materials were added as an milestone for all Product Managers Onboarding Material.

Anonymous

4.4Exceptional
In one of my previous projects, I completed the proof of concept (POC) for our new bulk job framework using a low-traffic job. After confirming its effectiveness, I migrated a high-volume job to the framework. Additionally, I implemented a separate maintenance job responsible for deleting bulk job data one day after completion. This maintenance job deletes data from two tables in a single query. However, as the data grew, the execution time of the delete query increased. Since the maintenance job runs every hour, the team responsible for the migrated high-volume job began noticing deadlock issues, particularly at the start of the hour, ultimately having to disable the feature for new jobs.

To address this, I started investigating the issue and noticed a pattern: the deadlocks occurred every hour at the 0th minute. I utilized the SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS command to gather more information and simulated the scenario at the exact 0th minute of the hour, successfully replicating the issue in our staging environment. This process enabled me to identify the cause of the deadlock.

I discovered that the delete query in the maintenance job and the insert query for job data in MySQL were causing the deadlock. The delete query acquired a gap lock to fetch a large amount of data, while the insert query attempted to insert a row within the same gap lock, leading to the deadlock. This unexpected challenge was blocking our entire project and was particularly significant for me, as I had never encountered deadlocks before, presenting a valuable learning opportunity.

To resolve the problem, I modified the queries to simplify them, effectively shifting more work to the job itself. This change successfully eliminated the deadlock issues. This challenge was particularly memorable for me because it not only enhanced my problem-solving skills but also deepened my understanding of database management.

Anonymous

4.2Exceptional
I was running co-design workshops with young people with cancer and they all designed their own VR apps. I had a time limit on my PhD so didn't have time to develop all their designs but they were really tied to these ideas. So I  started to contact companies that had commercial VR apps available that had similarities with the co-designers designs. In exchange I offered them an opportunity to test the suitability of their app in the medical space. A company in the states got back to me and said they were happy to amend their current app to include features designed by the young people with cancer. They sent me a copy of the app for free and the young people with cancer were able to evaluate an app that they had designed. I also managed to produce 2 fully working prototypes of the other 2 ideas they had ensuring that all participants felt included and heard in the process

Anonymous

4Strong
In one of my previous projects, we were tasked with designing and deploying a completely new state-of-the-art network, including a new VoIP system. However, we unexpectedly faced resistance from the customer, who preferred a traditional TDM-based PBX system instead of VoIP system. In this case, deploying the old PBX system would be a step back from a technological point of view. On the other hand, it was quite challenging to convince the customer of the advantages of VoIP technologies. To address this, I created a comprehensive presentation for all stakeholders, outlining in detail the benefits of VoIP, including reduced operational costs. Ultimately, we successfully implemented the newest VoIP system to the customer's satisfaction.

Anonymous

3.6Strong
It would be at my thesis, of predicting SEPSIS with AI using multiple models, and the challenge was with time management, since we had 2 problems, the first problem was that we didn't had access to the data base until half of the second semester, since the process to get access to a hospital database was a rigorous process, so we weren't able to go quick with our application. The second one was that a team mate and I had a family member with cancer, so we needed to manage our work load in a manner that we could be present as family and team members, we needed to fulfil our duties on the project, so I planted a prioritization process in witch we focused on our best attributes I on sql queries and documentation, mostly but the situation with the family member of my companion worsen, so needed someone to help with his work load, so I also assisted him with his main tasks as the main designer of the project, mainly on the uml diagrams, so that we could end our thesis 

Anonymous

3.6Strong
Brazil Carrefour- the volume of sales was low. The sales was going via app, and people had to have points to redeem. 

What we saw there was accumulated points that were very high, but redemptions rates were low. I looked at data more deeply, and did my checks on different point levels. Checked previous campaigns to see behaviours of customers. Such as who is our best buyer, who is the most loyal and how many points do they have. So I realized our best buyers, are the people actually have 1, 2 and 3 points. Then I proposed to have a less costly items to be known our next campaign, and negotiated the price discount with business planners. Indeed we saw a very high increase on volume of sales. From 200k on glasses category, we went to 780k knives. As the projects has the fixed cost, that additional sales meant profit for BL. This analysis then was the basis how I looked at the projects when it was sent for approval. 

Anonymous

3.4Strong
Within one week of joining my current oraganisation I was assigned to a development which I didn't have much background off as my senior developer got sick and had to go take leave for a month but the project had to be handed over within that time.This was really challenging for me as I was not only new to the project but also to the oraganisation and didn't have much help to ask for . But with the the available documents and the KT recordings although this was difficult but i could finally submit the project on time . Although this was really challenging for me but this helped me to gain confidence in myself and also earned me the confidence of others in this new organisation

Anonymous

One significant challenge I faced was when tasked with streamlining the onboarding process for sellers on our platform. The problem statement was vague, and the onboarding journey was unclear, complicating the creation of a research plan. I conducted multiple rounds of interviews to understand the technical process and team roles, despite initial discrepancies and lack of clarity. Recruiting participants was difficult without product support, but I persisted using trial-and-error methods. Bridging gaps between business, product, and user needs was challenging, especially when a strategic pivot changed the business model mid-project. Despite time and resource constraints, I emphasized user-centric insights, documented assumptions, and ensured they were validated in future iterations. This approach ultimately led to a more efficient onboarding process, demonstrating the importance of clear problem statements and cross-team clarity.
  • What is your most memorable challenge from your past experiences?
  • From your past experience, what has been the most challenging task?
  • When you look back on the past, what was your greatest challenge?
  • The most memorable challenge you've faced in the past?
  • How did you overcome your most memorable challenge in the past?
  • When it comes to past experiences, what has been your most memorable challenge?
  • Which of your past challenges is your most memorable?
  • What have you experienced as your most memorable challenge?
  • How would you describe your most memorable challenge from the past?
  • Discuss a significant obstacle you faced in your previous job, and what lessons did you learn from that experience?
  • Tell me about a time when you were faced with a difficult situation in your previous job, and how you managed to navigate through it.
  • Can you describe a challenge that you faced in your past work experience that tested your problem-solving skills, and how did you approach it?
  • What's the most significant challenge that you faced in your previous role, and what did you do to overcome it?
  • Reflecting on your past work experience, can you share a memorable challenge you faced, and how did you deal with it?
  • Talk to me about a significant hurdle you encountered in your previous job, and what was your strategy for dealing with it?
  • What's your most memorable challenge from your past experience?
  • Describe a time when you faced a significant obstacle in your previous role that you had to overcome.
  • Can you tell me about a challenging situation that you encountered in your previous job, and how you handled it?
  • What is the most memorable difficulty you faced in your previous work experience, and how did you overcome it?
  • Share with me an instance from your past experience where you had to tackle a significant challenge, and what steps did you take to overcome it?
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Interview question asked to Data Scientists, Product Managers, Software Engineers and other roles interviewing at Glovo, Qualcomm, Icertis and others: What is your most memorable challenge from your past experiences?.