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148 COMPETENCY-BASED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Situation: To avoid assigning rentals to individuals with poor credit, it

was my task as property manager for Residential Horizons to ensure that all
paperwork was in order and that credentials and income sources were verified.

Action: For quality-assurance purposes, I personally administered the

background and credit checks. When potential residents passed the review, I
managed the negotiations, including rent, maintenance fees, lawn-care options,
and final contracts.

Result: Since I began administering each aspect of the rental process,

all established standards, policies, and guidelines were followed. As a result,
in the five years that I worked for Residential Horizons, there were no evictions
or foreclosures because of failure to pay.

Question 149. Tell me about an occasion when your attention to detail

was recognized by management.

Situation: I was contracted by the Kinder Company to act as an

assistant to a finance executive when her secretary went on maternity
leave.

Action: Part of my responsibilities was to manage the accounting and

investment activities for high-net-worth clients. Since the clients had large
sums of money invested in the market, they expected insightful analyses of
complex data and accurate financial reports.

Result: Because I placed an uncompromising focus on satisfying

clients’ needs, I was asked to stay on as a permanent employee when the
secretary decided to remain at home to raise her child.

Question 150. Describe a time when addressing a minor project detail

made a significant difference in the outcome.

Situation: At Allied Electronics, there were a lot of calls to the sup-

port center because customers could not follow the guidelines in the vari-
ous manuals and in the on-line help pages. As a technical writer, I was
assigned to rewrite these documents, including the on-line help channel.

Action: To make the content more instructive as well as more inter-

esting, I incorporated illustrations that supplemented the written descriptions.
When finished, I also provided a final quality-assurance check for all of the
new documents.

American Management Association
www.amanet.org