Three managers send you urgent data requests on the same morning. How do you decide what to do first?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Clarifies the decision each request supports and its deadline
- Estimates effort for each
- Prioritises by business impact and urgency
- Communicates timelines openly and involves own manager if needed
- Looks for repeated requests to automate or self-serve
Model answer
I start by asking each manager a short question: what decision will this help, and by when? Often "urgent" means a meeting tomorrow, not in an hour. I also estimate effort, because a five-minute number can be sent right away while a new analysis takes days. Then I order by impact and deadline: a request feeding a pricing decision today beats a nice-to-have chart for next week. I reply to everyone with an honest timeline, so nobody is left guessing. If two high-impact requests truly conflict, I ask my own manager to help decide instead of choosing politically. Afterwards I look for patterns. If the same type of question keeps coming, I build a small dashboard or saved query so managers can serve themselves, which frees time for deeper work.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed medium round and get scored on every answer.
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