Behavioral

I want to hear about a time when you had to compromise

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Anonymous

7 months ago
4.2Exceptional
In my role as a Systems Analyst, I once was the lead developer of a project where the client requested additional features that weren’t in the initial scope. While I wanted to deliver these enhancements, our team was already under tight deadlines. After discussing with team lead, I compromised by prioritizing the high-impact features the client needed immediately, while deferring others for future phases. This solution balanced the client's requests with our time constraints, ensuring timely delivery and maintaining client satisfaction. This experience taught me how to make balanced, strategic decisions that align stakeholder expectations with project limitations.

Anonymous

4 months ago
4Strong
One requirement was completely missed by the cross-functional team. The requirement pertains to Oracle Transportation Management and involves incorporating a specific lane to deliver goods from the contract manufacturer to the destination warehouse, and subsequently to the customer. This lane includes specific lane sheet changes and logic that needed to be addressed by the cross-track team to accommodate these CDC orders.
Unfortunately, this requirement was overlooked during Test Cycle 2, leading to testing failures. As a result, we had to close Test Cycle 2. Within two weeks, UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and BAT (Business Acceptance Testing) were scheduled to begin. However, the cross-track team required additional time to incorporate the missed requirement.
This left us with limited time to complete testing before UAT and BAT. To meet the project timeline, I collaborated with the team to work over 2-3 weekends, ensuring end-to-end testing and defect resolution were completed. I also convinced the team to accept compensatory time off after the completion of BAT and UAT. Ultimately, the team successfully implemented the change without impacting the overall project timeline.

Anonymous

6 months ago
4Strong
Sure, back when I was working at OpenText there was an issue related to best framework for automating our test cases. And we had an inhouse framework that was a variation of Selenium so that was present as an option but since I was tasked in finding the best framework that would have better test coverage I ventured out and tried to find a better one. On top of that I just had a two weeks to find a framework and also complete the testing so that the product can go for production. Given the time constraints it was difficult to go for new framework so I had to compromise and complete the test cases using the inhouse framework and then once we had a successful release I made sure to venture out and try out different frameworks like Puppeteer, Playwright. And after that we struck out with Puppeteer but yeah I had to compromise on picking out puppeteer before the release but after the release we migrated towards puppeteer.

Anonymous

6 months ago
3.6Strong
When I developed the tools to review the high-risk customers transactions, I started alone and did it in my own way. When I started collaborating with colleagues, they brought their own feedback and had their own ideas on what should be included in the tool; I did not agree with all of their ideas. However what is most important is our common mission, our common goal; since a whole team is going to use this tool, it is important that they feel that their opinion is valued too, and so I compromised and added all of their ideas to the tool.

Anonymous

3 months ago
3.4Strong
At Auctane, I had a senior dev working on tech debt, this was critical for some small segment of customers and my PM was looking forward to it being devliered. A churn happend on other team and they had a higher priority project. That EM approaced me to help him deliver the project. I had to reshffle the resource and had to push back on the timing for this tech debt project . The compramise I made was to put hold the project we had been working and convince my PM that this was most optimal approach for the company.
  • I want to hear about a time when you had to compromise
  • Share a story about an occasion when you were forced to compromise
  • Describe a time you had to compromise
  • Tell me about a time when you had to make a compromise
  • I would like to hear about a time when you made a compromise
  • Share with me an instance when you had to compromise
  • Tell me about a time when you had to compromise
  • Can you describe a situation where you had to find a middle ground with someone?
  • Have you ever been in a situation where you had to give up something to reach a mutual agreement?
  • Tell me about a time when you had to make concessions to achieve a common goal.
  • Have you ever had to sacrifice some of your goals to meet the expectations of others?
  • Can you share an example of a time where you had to reach a compromise with a teammate or colleague?
  • Tell me about a situation where you had to negotiate to come up with a solution that benefited both parties.
  • Have you ever had to make a trade-off to get a project completed on time?
  • Can you describe a situation where you had to balance your needs with someone else's needs?
  • Tell me about a time where you had to make a difficult decision that required compromise.
  • Have you ever been in a situation where you had to reconcile different viewpoints to reach a compromise?
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Interview question asked to Data Scientists, Product Managers, Software Engineers and other roles interviewing at Talend, Alteryx, Verb and others: I want to hear about a time when you had to compromise.