Sample Answer
In my third project, I owned a reporting dashboard that kept timing out whenever users pulled 3+ months of data. Roughly 25% of report requests were failing, and support tickets had doubled over two sprints. My first step was to reproduce the issue in a lower environment and add detailed query logging and timing metrics. That showed one SQL query doing multiple nested joins on a 20M-row table and scanning far more data than needed. I paired with our data engineer, pulled slow-query logs, and used `EXPLAIN` plans to pinpoint missing indexes and unnecessary columns. We rewrote the query, introduced pagination, pushed heavy aggregations into a nightly materialized view, and added a 60-second async export option. Timeouts dropped from 25% to under 1%, average load time fell from 18 seconds to about 4 seconds, and support tickets on that feature went down by roughly 70% over the next month.
Keywords
In your resume you note improving or optimizing [a process, KPI, or metric]. What specific baseline metrics did you start from, what steps did you personally take, and how did you verify that the improvement was due to your changes rather than external factors?
On your resume you mention working on a cross-functional project (e.g., involving multiple teams or stakeholders). Describe a situation from that project where priorities conflicted—how did you navigate the trade-offs and what was the final outcome?
Walk me through a recent multi-channel digital marketing campaign you managed end-to-end. How did you set objectives, choose channels, allocate budget, and measure success?
In your civil engineering studies, what specific design coursework or project work did you complete related to irrigation channels or canals (e.g., design of lined/unlined canals, distributaries, minors)? Describe one such design in detail, including how you determined discharge, permissible velocity, section dimensions, and lining choice for Gujarat-type soil and climate conditions.
Based on your hydrology and irrigation engineering background, explain how you would estimate the irrigation water requirement for a kharif crop in a semi-arid region of Gujarat. Walk me through each step: from reference evapotranspiration estimation, crop coefficient selection, effective rainfall calculation, to arriving at canal discharge for a given command area.