I034s2 Interview Preparation: Have you ever been on a team where someone was not pulling their own weight? Sample 2 – Mid Level

Interview Preparation: Have you ever been on a team where someone was not pulling their own weight? Sample 2 – Mid Level

Yes, several times.

I keep a close watch on deliverables of my team. I can easily observe if any team is performing less than they are capable of.

It happened when we were in final phases of project. I realized that one of my team is producing output with lot of mistakes. Senior members of team had to put in lot of my effort in reviewing his work. It turned out that we are spending more man hours in reviewing and correcting his work. This was delaying whole team’s work.

I asked some of my leads to have a discussion with him. They could not bring out anything. So after sometime I went on a coffee with him and talked about life in general. He told me that he was going through a bad phase in his life. His father was suffering from a life-threatening disease.

I told him not to worry and focus on his family sometime. I told him that I will ask my lead to reduce workload on him. And if he needs to any financial help – I am there personally plus we can crowd fund.

After sometime his father recovered and he is now one of the best performers in the team.

I will also like to talk about the 2nd situation where one of the team-member was producing delayed and faulty output. I had a talk with him. He assured that he will improve. I gave him a mentor. Nothing improved in 3 months. I put him on a different project. Again, the same story. I asked HR to put him in a different role. We gave him sufficient options, opportunities and time to improve. Nothing worked. At the end, in the interest of team and organization, unfortunately I had to let him go.