Ownership Flashcards
QUESTION: Give me an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead
Title: FIBEP DC to Berlin
Situation:
FIBEP, an international media intelligence consortium, extended an invitation in 2016 for Veritone to speak about AI/ML in Washington, DC
Executive team was unavailable, but I jumped at the opportunity to take the speaking engagement despite less than 5 months on the job.
Intersection of professional speaking + ML/AL + company relevance
Obstacle/Task:
I tasked myself with serving as a thought leader and evangelizing the benefits of AI/ML while showcasing how the company’s platform helps facilitate use of this technology
Action:
Brainstormed session with marketing about a presentation ideas leveraging company strengths and overlap with AI/ML
Practice, practice, practice!
Produced presentation on “How the intelligent cloud creates transformative media”
Results:
30 minute “TED Talk” style presentation in front of an internationally diverse, technology and media centric audience
Engaged audience; received compliments
FIBEP extended an all expenses covered invitation for me to attend the following year in Berlin of which I accepted
Professionally challenged myself, grew network and represented the company when others couldn’t
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Ownership.
QUESTION: Tell me about a time that you went above and beyond?
OR
Tell me about a time when you took on something significant outside your area of responsibility. Why was it important? What was the outcome?
Title: Weekend testing of postgres version upgrade
Situation:
Veritone leverages AWS RDS PostgreSQL for its primary database services
Veritone hasn’t not performed a migration update in several years and running PG 9.6
Migration to PostgreSQL 11.8 was scheduled to stay on top of modern functionality and security updates
DevOps spent a month preparing for this effort and testing in dev and stage environments
First time in company history to publicize a 3 hour maintenance window where services were offline
Short staffed QA team responsible for testing US and UK environments in a short timeframe
Obstacle/Task:
I enrolled in the Slack channel to follow the DevOps and QA team’s progress and migration timing
Action:
I volunteered to help test 2 applications in US/UK environments during off-hours
Following along with the maintenance plan and executed validation steps
Provided the DevOps and QA team with real-time updates as testing was underway
Results:
Successfully migrated ahead of schedule within 2 ½ hours
Update improved security and unlocked features
The team invited me to aid in the next database update planned for the following week
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Ownership
QUESTION: Adjust work priorities to meet changing demands?
OR
Tell me about a time when you had to leave a task unfinished.
Title: Introduction of Google Analytics 4
Situation:
In Q4-20, focused on completing my end of year roadmap
Enhancing the pre-campaign search previewer so users would have more helpful insights when building a campaign
However, in late October last year, Google Analytics announced the introduction of GA4 causing me to shift focus
At the time, Google does not have commercially available APIs for any third party to interface with its GA4 service
Existential blocker preventing GA4 accounts from interfacing with my product
Advertisers that upgrade or create a new account were unable to connect
Obstacle/Task:
Goal to provide internal and external parties with guidance during time of influx
Action:
I discovered Google had an Analytics Data API Trusted Testers program to gain early access to its alpha API
Reviewing it’s API Support docs, the endpoint doesn’t provide granular data needs (hour and minute level records)
Another existential threat
Collaborated with Google to identify alternative pathways to run GA-U and GA4 concurrently
Crafted help article outlining connection options and vetted with internal stakeholders before socializing
Proactively prompted advertisers hitting invitation landing page with guidance
Results:
Mitigated the perception that it was a “product problem”
Provided an alternative method for advertisers to connect
Mobilzed quickly around an urgent matter and identified alternative support methods within 2 weeks
Connected 3 advertisers that otherwise would have been at an impasse
No option but to shift priorities given the severity of the change
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Ownership
Bias for action. Speed matters, quick responsiveness to something that may have been extensintial threat
