A practice prompt we wrote. No company or candidate report names it, so it carries no company tag.
How to answer
Answer as if the call could happen. OpenAI’s interview guide says the recruiter may ask for references after final interviews. Source 1Interview Guide | OpenAIPublisherOpenAISource typecompany hiring page A customer you describe here is one you could be asked to put forward, so describe them as they would describe themselves.
Take it in this order.
- Place the person and the relationship. Their role, the organization by industry and size, what you delivered and when it ended. Take the last customer, as asked; skipping to your best invites the question of why. If your customers were internal teams, say so and use the team that consumed your work.
- Say what they did well in their words. “She’d say I told her about problems before her team found them.” Then give the episode that earned it: something the customer saw and felt, not a design choice they never saw.
- Say what they missed in their words too. “She’d say I let the pilot run two weeks past the date I gave her, and told her too late to warn her own boss.” It has to be real, have cost them something, and be something they would raise unprompted. Say whether they told you or you worked it out.
- Own your part and show the change. One sentence on why it happened, what you now do differently, and a later time the new habit showed up. Know what is still unfinished; a habit you claim is fully fixed invites the follow-up.
- Close on where the relationship stands. “She’d take my call. She’d also mention the miss.”
Keep both halves the same length; a warm paragraph and a one-line miss reads as managing the answer. The trap is the flattering miss: “they’d say I worked too hard” tells the interviewer you won’t name a real one.
Follow-ups
What the interviewer may ask next, once your first answer is on the table.
- Who exactly would I be talking to, and would they take the call?
- Did they ever tell you about the miss directly, or are you guessing?
- What would they say you still haven’t fixed?
Where answers go wrong
- Offering a miss that is praise in disguise (“they’d say I was too available”) or one the customer caused, so the second half of the question goes unanswered.
- Answering from your own view of the project rather than the customer’s, so the “did well” is a technical choice they never saw.
Answer this in two minutes
Write the answer you would say out loud. The clock starts with your first word.
Illustrative answer about a fictional project
My current customer is only three months in, so the last engagement I finished is a regional credit union with about 40 branches, and the person you’d call is their head of member services. I was the deployed engineer from a document-processing company for four months, building the intake that reads loan applications and their supporting documents, and I rotated off in June.