Sample Interview Questions and Answers: Tell Me About A Time – Dana’s Answer

(Who is Dana?  Dana – Media Planner and Buyer with 4 years experience seeking Marketing PR Specialist role)

Terry: Tell me about a time where you had to work with a team to accomplish something and there were really tight deadlines.

Dana: During my time at XXX, I was media planning and buying.  So, we were given marketing goals and objectives as well as a budget by the client.

We had to take those objectives and the budget, the monetary amount, into consideration and work with various vendors having to keep in mind that the vendors we worked with had to fit within that client’s marketing goals and objectives to make sure that it was the right platform for their marketing messages.

One particular client that I had worked with was an auditing and consulting firm and didn’t really have a whole lot of experience with that sector, but kind of got thrown into the project.  My strength is working in the business-to-business arena, so I gladly took it on and kind of took on the role of the account manager of that account.

We, as a team, had to develop an annual meeting plan for this particular client and since I was the account manager, I kind of had to spearhead reaching out to the vendors and requesting proposals and also coordinating those proposals with a digital team and working with the broadcast team.

So, there was the vendor relationship I had to manage as well as the client relationship and then the various people on the team.  We had to complete the project within about a month’s time, which usually we’re given about eight weeks for a project like that.

So I really just, you know, kept in excellent communication with the vendors, with the client, with my team, just to keep everyone in the loop and make sure that everyone was on task and that we were going to meet the deadline, which we did. We were able to complete the media plan; it was in the four-week period.

The client was very pleased with the final outcome and ended up signing off on the plan without a whole lot of edits and I was actually able to, last minute, go and meet the client directly at their office.  So that was a really nice way of appreciation of my work on the team and how I was able to kind of get everyone together to complete this project in a short amount of time.

Here’s how I would rate this answer . . .

Q7. Tell me about a time when you . . . – DANA QUICK RATING –  B

Did pick specific instance, included set up of  situation and end of story, could strengthen and include more “I” messages of what you did in the middle.