Describe a challenging project and influence others
Overview
This question evaluates a data scientist's leadership, project management, stakeholder influence, coaching, and ability to quantify trade-offs and business impact within the Behavioral & Leadership domain.
In the past 12 months, describe your most challenging project end-to-end. Be specific: (1) What was the goal, constraints, and what made it hard? (2) Tell me about the toughest stakeholder you had to convince—what were their objections, what data or experiments did you use, and how did you adapt when they still disagreed? (3) Give one example of how you helped a teammate succeed (coaching, unblocking, or sharing credit) and the measurable outcome. (4) Quantify impact in business terms and trade-offs you accepted (e.g., latency vs. accuracy, speed vs. quality). (5) What would you do differently next time to get a better outcome? Keep your answers concrete, with dates, metrics, and your personal actions and decisions.