Interview Story - Took Initiative

While I was an Implementation Consultant at Cerner Corporation, I was engaged in a major project for a multi-hospital health system when a colleague in my department asked me to stand in for him to deliver training for his client. He had an unforeseen emergency that would prevent him from completing this assignment.

His project was at a critical juncture. It would have severely impacted the timeline if the training could not occur as scheduled.

To address the situation, I first notified my project leadership and direct manager of the request. Both assented, provided that my assistance would not impact my primary client. There were contractual obligations that required our company to deliver on time. Fortunately, we were on schedule.

Anticipating management would not oppose my colleague’s request, I asked him to forward the training documentation that he put together. When he sent it a day later, I reviewed it and realized that it was incomplete. Mainly because he was not as seasoned as me, he had not realized the oversights.

This was mid-week and the training was to start at the beginning of the next week. I quickly set up a meeting with my colleague and our direct manager to explain that I would need additional information ASAP from his client to update the documentation. With support from my manager, my colleague sent me the additional information.

He also sent me the email addresses of the attendees plus the telephone number of the manager who would be attending. I phoned that manager the same day and verified that she was aware that I would be doing the training and confirmed the list of attendees. I sent them the WebEx invitation for the 4-hour session.

I then reprioritized my own assignments and carved out time through the end of the week and into the weekend to both complete my time-critical assignments and to update the training documentation and prep for the session the following Tuesday morning.

As a result, I successfully orchestrated the training session on Tuesday, and it was well-received by the client. The project manager emailed me and copied my direct manager to thank me for stepping in on such short notice.