Interview Prep Flashcards
Current position & how your education and experience relates to the duties and responsibilities of this position
Education: MBA & Bachelors in Management & Marketing from JU
Experience: Over the past nearly 10 years, I have worked in Joint facilities where my team is responsible for the accurate and timely processing of a wide variety of Joint Facilities transactions (both payable & receivable) that are incredibly inconsistent, and very specifically managed by their supporting Joint Facility contractual agreement terms. This requires a theability to interpret and execute the contractual language contained in our portfolio of Agreements, as well as influencing our business partners to ensure activity report data is received in a timely manner to allow its review (and billing where applicable) primarily for receivable billing.
Situation: *Having been in Joint Facilities for nearly 10 years, I have become very focused, and passionately driven to identify opportunities to streamline processes that can produce further efficiencies leading to our team’s ongoing success. I am very driven to at a minimum meet, but love to exceed our monthly metric goals, and have even made it a game. When time permitting, and when my analysis reveals a clear path to beat our numbers – I have been known to email the team with a list of the remaining facilities to bill goal that will produce the greatest impact to our month end numbers. The nature of our work involves many competing task, and contractual complexities that we must be nimble in our flexibility to pivot & shift as more pressing items surface requiring varying levels of research, communication, & urgency. This is not a skillset that simplyexists, but is acquired over time, with experience, and expanded understanding that no 2 things are alike – and that is ok. It helps keep things interesting. Obviously, due to these complexities, most things that cross our paths require time, and unfortunately that is not unlimited.
Task/Action: *I created processes and strategies for managing my work over the years- to ensure that within my portfolio, all possible Receivable billing is invoiced, and all possible Payable invoices are processed. As for anything not in my portfolio that I discover outstanding & available becomes fair game to send my team “friendly” encouraging, nudging notes on what facilities would strategically produce the greatest positive impact to our month end numbers.
Result: Once we realized such strong metric levels & identified what was a realistic goal level to pursue, achieving the goal was no longer enough for me, and I began a personal game out of competing with our own Record level metrics every year (I am a nerd). This was not achieved overnight or even in my first year for that matter but was the product of a much experience andacquired knowledge of our systems, facilities, foreign partners, and constantly changing operational conditions (to name a few).This can all have a powerful impact on how smoothly or challenging our transactions can become from one month to the next. I have also been the leading contact for most technology improvements and issues for our team (Compensation &Tony’s Contracts team) for 4+years. I am very proud of the many improvements I have brought to life from what simply began as a result of my brain always seeking opportunities of system automations and process improvements. In addition to my regular daily responsibilities, this additional technology responsibility has produced a several improvements and automations to our systems, creating much needed efficiencies in our daily tasks since we are a skeleton crew in comparison to what once existed. One of the improvements included: the addition of a Related Roads Search within our CMS, which when selected will not only display the Agreements for a specific Railroad; but also includes all its related roads. For example, G&W is a big one. Some of the roads within G&W include CFE, IORY, CIND, and many others. Using this tool, I worked to put in place, if searching any of those short lines the user wants to find all agreement for not just that road but all its related roads there is a box added to check when searching to populate this longer list of Related Road Agreements. Ifappropriate, I will explain other technology initiatives I have driven in greater detail in other responses.
Leadership
I believe that leadership skills can be a more natural/innate quality and/or can be an acquired skillset developed with education and professional experience. Fortunately, I would say that I have both. Something about being first born in a family seems to strongly influence this being more of a default instinct (often without being intentional).
More specifically, I would describe myself primarily as a Facilitative Leader (with the ability to adjust to the needs of the team as new challenges present themselves). Personally, I strive to demonstrate behaviors and qualities that I appreciate receiving myself. I respect my team and colleagues as individuals with individual strengths, skills, needs, and methods; and I give them the space and autonomy to do their work. We have bi-weekly 1:1s that are kept flexible to their needs, while providing an open line of communication (being available anytime) should they encounter an issue they need assistance with or need to bring to my attention. I do not believe micromanagement is pleasant for either side of the equation, and I prefer to instead provide my team with the space and autonomy to complete their work and trusting them to meet our deadlines and monthly KPIs and maintain an open line of available communication for assistance with any issues they need additional assistance to resolve. Communication and relationships are very important, but the nature of those relationships can vary a great deal from one person to another based on their individual needs and personal preference. I practice consistency in my communication to my team as individuals and adjust accordingly to their level of social engagement.
It is very important that my team knows they have a voice, and I value their input. During interviews for a manager position on my team, I asked Jack if he would participate in the interview process explaining that it was important to me to hear is thoughts about the potential candidates for a position that he would be working closely with as his counterpart. Based on his reaction to my request, I knew it was the right move as it was very clear that he was excited to be involved in the process (and appreciated my value for his personal input).
We are not robots, so I believe it is also important to take the time to know your team a bit more personally. To demonstrate this, upon the Manager offer being accepted, I reached out to our new team member and invited him to a one-on-one lunch before his start date. I wanted him to know I was excited to have him on my team, let him tell me a bit more about himself, and to share more information about our team and the position he would be starting. Our lunch went very well and provided foundation of sorts for his officially start date on our team.
Crisis Management
I believe the first step to Crisis Management is through the acknowledgement and awareness of the potential for any crisis, and to seek to identify methods or process updates that can be initiated to minimize or prevent potential crisis from occurring at all. Unfortunately, with implemented preventative measures there are still no guarantees. It is important to take swift reparative action when anissue has been identified, and upon its correction – seek to identify the cause and any potentially preventative processes that could be initiated to prevent recurrence. Realistically, we will never be completely invulnerable to unanticipated issues, so if we try to make each experience one to learn from – we build an environment of continuous improvement to at least minimize our exposure. Over the course of my railroad career, I have taken initiative to create processes and automations to remedy potential problems or implement automations for needlessly manual and time-consumingprocesses that would allow the time for a closer focus on our meaningful tasks in our billing, invoice review, and audits.
One example is a foreign road that sent a payable invoice, and I processed their payment. Fast forward a month and they are veryupset they have not received payment. Upon researching, I see that a payment was remitted to them for that payment. I explained to them that I was doing everything possible to correct this issue, and they did not need to worry. We would resolve, and they would receive payment. Upon further discussion, they shared that they had recently changed their bank lockbox (but had not provided us with a notice of such change). The lack of payment receipt was the result of their failure to share their updated banking information. I worked to get their lockbox information updated in our system, worked with Accounts Payable to issue a Stop Payment on the original remittance, and I reprocessed the invoice with the new banking information reflected. The customer was extremely appreciative, and hopefully will remember this in the future if they decide to change their banking information again.
Relationship Building
Relationships within any organization are critical in progressing forward, and in my case feels somewhat natural as a 3rd generation railroader. Growing up, my dad worked in Signals and being in a different location from the rest of our family – I remember seeing (what I realize now were simply other railroaders and their families) as Uncles, Aunts, and cousins. When deciding where I wanted to work, the decision became much more about the people than the work. I can learn to do any job, but the people I’m engaging my time with forwork can be quite significant. Based on my upbringing, I chose to pursue CSX because of the sweet memories of everyone from my childhood. My father passed late 2019, and I was touched by all of his former colleagues that reached out when they heard the news. Relationship building is not just for the work to me, it’s much more personal.
• Within Team.
Within my working team, I try to get to know each person as anindividual and understand their needs. Two primary ways I demonstrate this in my daily life (especially with my team) is by (1) being responsive & (2) being available. It is very important to me that my team understands the importance of owning our mistakes, and upon the first opportunity when I discovered an error that I personally made while reconciling a complicated adjustment – I contacted our new addition to the team (that Icoincidentally had been training on this process); and prior to correcting my error, I showed him what was done incorrectly as an opportunity to learn. I wanted to demonstrate the behaviors that I request of my team. We own our mistakes, correct them, learn from them, and work to prevent them moving forward. It is not every day your manager says, “Hey! I want you to look at my mistake…” I was trying to make a point.
• Outside of Team.
Outside my working team, the 2 practices still apply (being responsive & being available), however it’s just a little different in a way I’m not sure how to describe. These are the people I do not interact with daily or weekly or even monthly, so the best way I can build relationships with external colleagues is to be consistent and reliable. A personal pet peeve of mine is to hear someone get asked for something they are perfectly capable of providing, and instead passing along like a hot potato – stating “that’s not my job.” 99% of the time these requests come up, the question could have been answered in the same or less time required to pass along to someone else. I legitimately enjoy helping my external colleagues if I have the knowledge and access to provide an answer to their question. Building relationships is also not a one-way street, it goes both ways, and if I will need to rely on other areas of the company to assist me with tasks in my work – I choose to demonstrate the same helpfulness that I hope to receive when I need it. I have worked to build additional relationships with various people in our Engineering group to seek their assistance in our capital project plans. One example was this past year when I met Randy Daniels in Chicago at the UP facility to high rail the Villa Grove joint line to get an idea of what capital improvements we might anticipate in the coming year. I also had to rely on the assistance of several field guys in various regions to confirm the completion of several diamond installations planned for the year to ensure the appropriate proportions were billed to our foreign counterparts appropriately, as these are high dollar expenses ($250k+ each). To further contribute, and expand my relationships outside my immediate group, I also participated in several Clean Sweeps as multiple locations working side by side Jaime Purl, Will Roseborough, and many other Engineering colleagues from all levels in a wide variety of positions all over the company.
Railroad Agreement Interpretation & Execution
In my current team, all the transactions that we process are connected to a wide variety of contractual agreements in a way that is similar tothe payroll processed for the union agreements in your department. Our agreements not only vary in type of agreement such as Trackage Rights and Haulage (to name a few), but within those agreement types there are language variations that make each agreement unique when compared to the next. We also seek within our portfolio of agreements to identify audit prospects every year to research to identify any potential recovery opportunities. One example of an audit discovered has been the result of an error that occurred in years past within the rate escalation that carried itself forward.
Another area of consideration in our agreement interpretation process is any audit lookback language that may or may not be clearly stated within the contract in question. When this language is present, we use that for our limits of recovery; however, when this language is silent-our limitations for recovery fall to the Statute of Limitations defined by each state for Contractual Agreements.
Our agreements also define maintenance responsibilities for applicable agreements, and any proportional maintenance splits that may exist. When invoices are received for our payment for maintenance at a certain location, this is a first line of defense to prevent overpayment – by ensuring the billed percentage agrees with our contract, to be followed by the remaining review.
One example is we recently received a maintenance invoice from another road, and they billed us 100% of the burdened project. We review the agreement, and it clearly stated CSX was only responsible for 50% of the maintenance at that location. We contacted the foreign road making them aware of this error and let them know they could send a replacement corrected invoice (or we could short pay the invoice at the 50% proportion). They responded with a replacement invoice reflecting this correction for processing.
Influencing Others – Challenging status quo
Situation: *Automated Collections Process due to limited time and resources available to continue sending manual collection notices for AR invoices beginning to age.
Task/Action: Managed full initiative project to design and implement an automated system with Technology to generate Past Due Invoice Notifications to send to foreign roads to assist in reducing aging of balances due that are not in dispute from Start to production of Live Functional resource.
Result: Produced a very powerful resource for automatically communicating these outstanding items with our foreign rail partners (as opposed to sending individual emails to each road as done in the past). This communication initiates a return in some form of communication for the majority of notices that send out – be it a update that the payment is in process or if there is some dispute present that warrants further research & communication. It definitely helps to filter out most of the items that are definitely not being challenged for payment & has saved a ton of time.
Adapting to Changing Methods or Priorities
Situation: *Adapting to change is critical in Joint Facilities. For a little background, when I started in 2013 as a Specialist in Joint Facilities, we were an overall team of nearly 16 (covering Contracts & Compensation) with 8 in Compensation. Over the years, and multiple departmental shuffling & restructuring, our team has been reduced absorbing the work of those resources to what became a team of 5 in 2017, until 2019 when we were moved again, and reduced further to what is now a team of 3-since moving from Operations Planning to the Controllers Group. In addition to these reduced resources, the work itself is very inconsistent to say the least. During this transition, we had to navigate a way to transition 475 facilities to our remaining team of 3.
Task/Action: Our teams’ monthly metric threshold goal of a 2 month accrual, and In order to adhere to, and at a minimum maintain the metrics levels we had previously achieved with 2 fewer people. I devised a personal goal of reaching and maintaining a 1 month metric (anything lower would be impossible due to timing and the nature of our work). This reduced personal goal metric would allow me to create a “cushion” of protection around my responsibilities to provide a safety for all the unexpected items & issues that are known to fall out of the sky unexpectedly. In an effort to (at a minimum) preserve our metric gains & not backslide damaging our metrics/goals results, I immediately began managing all familiar facilities, which were a lot due to the time I have been in this group – I have at some point managed (not all), but most of our active facilities.
Result: By implementing and driving this personal goal, it allowed my extra efforts to deliver team lifting results.
Due to my long standing knowledge, I was able to keep a great deal of this newly gained work for our team moving, to bridge the gap until we were able to formally transition a full split between our team of 3.
Decision Making & Anticipating Consequences
Situation: *In Joint Facilities, there are many areas that if there is an error or inaccuracy – it has the potential to carry into perpetuity until discovery. The primary potential contributor is our Rate Escalation Program within CMS, because if there is an error entry into the Index Table used by the system to calculate the next rate for all of our facilities, it will not only impact the specific rates for the year being loaded (but if not identified & corrected immediately) – most future rates calculated will be off having generated from a year over year calculation (the exception being year over base, which would only impact that specific year – unless some other value is incorrect).
Task/Action: I have been managing the CMS Escalation system since at least 2018. Over the time I have managed the CMS Escalation Program, I have identified many pitfalls and potentially preventable complications along the way and have become greatly aware of its potential impact to not just the current year, but all future rates involved. I take great care to check & double check the Loaded Indexes to ensure accuracy, as well as any identified facilities that may have errors in the populated Escalation Details that could corrupt the results produced by the program.
One common area of challenge involves the Index Tables themselves; because these are also used by the Properties Group, and I have found on more than 2 occasions where my the Index table I populate in advance was changed (fortunately prior to my running the program), so they had to be corrected again & run as soon as I fixed the numbers.
Result: All of my preparation will help to ensure rates are loaded as correctly as possible for the next period of impact, and minimize future issues in our billing or payments that require a great deal of research to resolve.
Overcoming Obstacles
Situation: *Long Outstanding Payables for NS Haulage we believed had already been resolved due to silence from NS regarding many short paid balances I challenged to NS due to supporting data being messy, unreliable, and many examples of duplication & non-haulage cars being billed.
Task/Action: We recently received correspondence from NS requesting an update on these outstanding balances that the most recent were several months old. Apparently, our former contact is on some sort of medical leave now; and another person is looking into some of her outstanding items.
Result: Upon conducting a thorough review & analysis, I identified several examples of definite bad cars included in the billing; however I also identified some that appeared to be appropriate that did not populate our report at the time of its original review. Due to the age, and time required to manually review each short paid car on each invoice with an open balance for both CSX & NS, I proposed to NS that we would be willing to settle these invoices at 50% their remaining balances. This seemed fair and appropriate since research shows there is responsibility on both sides. NS is currently reviewing information I provided, and agreed to settle the balances at 50%.
Analyzing Data to Make a Decision
Situation: *In light of all of the plans and discussions in advance of the Pan Am transition, I began thinking about the potential impact to the JF Team, to determine if there were any steps that could be made to simplify or at least ease the transitional adjustments.
Task/Action: With the expectation that upon completion of this transaction, we will be transitioning all associated JF Agreements, I took a hard look at our Contract Entry Process (amongst many others needing work), and constructed a 16 item CMS Enhancement List (with many of those items being made up of multiple changes). After constructing this list of vision items I had already navigated their purpose, use, & benefits, I built mock up replacement screens, which I then paired with each existing screen & detailed the needed functionality for each. Upon meeting with technology to confirm feasibility of all the items I was requesting (since I am not opposed to asking for things I’m unsure are possible), I received solid confirmation for all of my imagined system enhancements, which I then followed by getting funding approval, and worked throughout the year with technology-progressing this list from beginning to end.
Result: I am incredibly proud of the results all of my work with technology helped produce, and as a result (and amongst many other things) the Contract Entry Process has been streamlined reducing several inefficient & daunting steps previously required as part of the process. This should enable our team to be better prepared for a portion of this transition whenever it comes. Upon completion, I also created a new Contract Entry Process Instructional Guide reflecting all the changes in the process moving forward.
Closing
I am grateful for the opportunity to interview with you today, and I am very excited for the opportunity to be considered for this position. I have progressed through Joint Facilities for what is quickly approaching 10 years’ and looking forward to this opportunity to utilize my skillset and experience to grow in a new area of the company.
I take my responsibilities as a leader very seriously, and I understand the impact my role can have on the success of your team. I genuinely believe my experience and accomplishments can provide real value to your team. Thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
