Choose an example
Use Harbor or a real project you are permitted to discuss. For a training case, introduce it as fictional. Do not invent customers, work experience, team leadership, business savings or model accuracy. You can show good reasoning without claiming commercial impact.
Build a 90-second answer
Use five parts: question and context; your exact contribution; method; checks and result; limitation and next step. Write one or two sentences per part. Rehearse aloud and remove tool lists that do not explain a decision.
Worked example
“In a fictional retail learning case I reconciled two January revenue definitions. I wrote a metric contract and repaired a one-to-many refund join by aggregating refund events before joining. I checked five completed orders, gross 410, refunds 35 and net 375, and tested another order with the same price to catch an incorrect DISTINCT fix. The dataset is tiny and has simplified currency/status rules, so it demonstrates method rather than production-scale reliability.”
Follow-up questions
Prepare answers to: Why did the first query fail? How did you independently validate the result? What did you personally write? What help or AI did you use? What would break at larger scale? What would you change next? An honest “I have not tested that yet; here is the check I would run” is more defensible than a fabricated answer.
A behavioral variant
For a genuine disagreement, describe the actual situation, your responsibility, the conversation, evidence and outcome. If you have no relevant workplace example, use an academic or volunteer example and say so. Do not turn the fictional manager from Harbor into a real employment story.
Review and repeat
Score specificity, ownership, validation, limitations and clarity 0–2 each. Ask a peer to repeat your main finding after listening: if they cannot, simplify the explanation. Save your own notes locally; these exercises do not upload a resume, record an interview or save a score.
Try the activity before reading its reference. Keep your sources, commands and assumptions with your work. Companion activities are unsaved self-practice and do not award a certificate or change lesson progress.