IntermediateBEHAVIORAL
Describe a time when your resume might suggest one thing about your skills or role, but the reality of your day‑to‑day responsibilities was more complex. How did you handle expectations from managers or stakeholders who misunderstood your actual scope of work?
Resume-Based
General

Sample Answer

One example is my last role, where my title was simply “Project Manager,” which on paper sounds pretty execution-focused. In reality, I was also doing a lot of product discovery and stakeholder alignment across sales, ops, and engineering. When a new VP joined, he assumed I was mainly a task tracker and started routing every minor request through me. That obviously wasn’t sustainable, and it pulled me away from the higher‑value work I was doing on roadmap prioritization. I set up a 30‑minute 1:1, walked him through my actual responsibilities using three live projects, and showed the impact: a 20% reduction in implementation time and a 15‑point NPS lift on a key workflow. Then I proposed a simple RACI and a triage process so minor items went directly to the right owners. Within a month, ad‑hoc requests dropped by about 40%, and he started pulling me into earlier strategic discussions instead.

Keywords

Clarified mismatch between title and actual responsibilitiesProactively reset expectations with a new executive stakeholderUsed concrete examples and metrics to illustrate real scope and impactImplemented structure (RACI, triage) to reduce noise and refocus on high-value work
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