Behavioral Question: Accountability and Ownership for a Data Scientist

You will be asked for two concrete, distinct examples:

• (a) One time you missed a due date.
• (b) One time you went beyond your formal responsibilities.

For each example, provide the following:

1. Dates, timeline, and measurable impact

• Exact dates (kickoff, planned milestones, actual delivery).
• Planned vs. actual timeline (how much variance and why).
• Measurable impact on a business/customer metric (e.g., CSAT, revenue/GMV, adoption, experiment outcomes).

2. Decision trade-offs and risks

• What you de-prioritized and why.
• Risks you explicitly accepted and how you mitigated them.

3. Stakeholders and communication

• Who you informed and when.
• Written artifacts you produced (links or short excerpts acceptable).

4. Recovery plan and leading indicators

• Milestones used to recover or accelerate.
• Leading indicators you monitored weekly to de-risk execution.

5. What you would do differently next time

• Two process changes that would have prevented the slip or scope creep.
• One change that would have accelerated positive impact without additional headcount.

Tip: Use a structured narrative (e.g., Situation → Task → Action → Result → Reflection) and quantify outcomes wherever possible.