Top Zelis Interview Questions and Answers to Prepare For Success

Landing a job at Zelis, a leading healthcare payments technology company, is an exciting opportunity for many professionals. However, acing the Zelis interview is key to getting your foot in the door.

In this comprehensive guide, we provide tips and example responses to the most common Zelis interview questions across functions like operations product, engineering, sales and more. Master these questions and you’ll be positioned for success in your Zelis interview.

Overview of Zelis Interview Process

While specific interviews will vary by role and team, most Zelis interviews follow a similar general structure:

• 1-2 phone or video screening interviews with HR or department leadership
• 3-5 rounds of formal onsite or video interviews, both one-on-one and panel style
• A focus on both technical skills as well as cultural fit
• Interviewers from various teams and levels
• Emphasis on situational and behavioral questions
• Interviews for technical roles will include coding tests or technical assessments
• The process is rigorous but also aims to provide a positive candidate experience

With this context in mind let’s look at example questions and answers for the Zelis interview across some common functions

Operations Interview Questions

Project management, customer service, analytics, quality assurance, and other roles are part of Zelis’ operations. You’ll want to demonstrate analytical abilities and process orientation.

Question: How would you make the work of a team or project more efficient?

A: First, I would find the points of pain using tools such as workflow reviews, data analysis, and interviews with stakeholders. I find the biggest problems or bottlenecks, like extra approvals, unclear handoffs between teams, or tools that don’t work well. Then I drill down on root causes. I come up with ways to improve processes, make things easier, or use technology to get to the root causes of these problems. I collaborate with stakeholders and leaders to align on and implement the improvements. I keep an eye on things like cycle times, defects, and process costs to see how they’re affecting things. I also meet regularly with teams to surface new areas for optimization.

For example, in one project I streamlined the intake process by implementing an automated request triage tool that cut intake time in half. This focus on continuous efficiency improvement is how I’ve contributed to major operational performance gains in past roles.

Q: Tell me about a time you successfully managed multiple competing priorities. How did you handle this?

A: In one role, we were expanding into several new product lines concurrently. This meant managing deliverables across product development, technology implementation, operational impacts and launch plans. To stay organized, I created a RACI matrix to define roles across the different workstreams and milestones. I hosted regular sync-ups with leaders to review timelines and risks. When operational needs conflicted, I facilitated discussions to align on priorities based on factors like customer impact and revenue potential.

Ultimately, through transparent communication, stakeholder alignment and contingency planning, we successfully managed the competing priorities. The products launched on schedule and immediately delivered revenue growth. The experience taught me the importance of planning rigor, being proactive about risks, and balancing competing needs through open dialogue.

Q: Describe a time you had to rapidly adjust project plans or operations in response to a sudden change.

A: When the pandemic hit, we needed to immediately shift our entire customer events slate to virtual. I worked with stakeholders across the organization to rapidly understand our capabilities, resources and goals. I mapped out a revised timeline, recalibrated budgets, and created a checklist of action steps. I had to balance speed with completeness – moving aggressively while not overlooking critical steps that would undermine the events. Through collaborative problem solving, transparent communication and focusing on the end goal, we successfully pivoted our massive events program to virtual in less than 2 months. It wasn’t seamless, but we were able to adapt with minimal disruption to customers. This experience demonstrated that even in times of sudden upheaval, by staying focused and leveraging cross-functional partnerships, operational leaders can deliver.

Product Management Interview Questions

Product roles at Zelis span product strategy, roadmapping, requirements gathering and user experience design. You’ll need to demonstrate strategic thinking and customer centricity.

Q: How would you assess the strengths and weaknesses of a product you were assigned to manage?

A: I would take a structured approach to deeply understand the product and market landscape through techniques like:

• Immersive user research – surveys, ridealongs, focus groups to reveal pain points and unmet needs
• Competitive benchmarking – evaluating product functionality, pricing, and positioning vs. alternatives
• Data analysis – reviewing usage metrics, sales data, churn rates to identify opportunities
• Stakeholder interviews with sales, client services, executives to uncover challenges

I would then map strengths against market needs to identify advantages to double down on. Weaknesses would inform areas for potential improvement. I would prioritize based on factors like customer value-add, development effort, and revenue impact.

For example, this process for one product revealed it had superior reporting capabilities relative to competitors, but lacked flexible workflow customizations. This led us to accelerate the reporting roadmap while adding customizable workflows features to the backlog.

Q: How would you go about improving the user experience of a complex B2B software product?

A: With a complex B2B product, improving UX requires a combination of qualitative insights and a quantitative, metrics-driven approach. I would conduct extensive user research through methods like ethnography, focus groups and usability testing to reveal pain points and areas of confusion. I’d review support ticket data to identify repetitive UX issues. I would instrument analytics to detect usability bottlenecks like high abandonment rates on particular features or workflows.

With these insights, I would create a prioritized roadmap of changes such as simplifying navigation, reducing cognitive load, adding wizards or guides, and customization options. I would advocate for UX/UI resources and collaborate closely with designers and engineers. I would set key metrics like task completion rate as goals and measure continuously post-launch. Enhancing UX requires deeply understanding users, championing UX priorities across the org, and measuring impact.

Q: How would you identify new market opportunities for product expansion or innovation?

A: To uncover new product opportunities, I believe in exploratory qualitative research coupled with analyzing market data for signals. This includes customer interviews, focus groups and observing users in their environment to reveal unmet needs. I also conduct competitive analysis to identify whitespace opportunities competitors are not serving well. In parallel, I analyze trends in adjacent markets or with complementary technologies to inspire potential new offerings. I blend this primary research with secondary market data on factors like changing demographics, policy impacts, industry M&A, funding trends etc. I develop hypotheses around viable new products and build business cases, working closely with pricing, sales and executives to pressure test assumptions. This “outside-in” approach of combining ethnography, competitive analysis and market data allows me to identify the highest potential new opportunities.

Engineering Interview Questions

Engineering candidates can expect highly technical interviews focused on coding skills and past projects. Be ready to talk through code.

Q: How do you optimize code for peak performance in a complex application?

A: Optimizing code performance starts by diagnosing hot spots through profiling tools to pinpoint slow functions or bottlenecks. I would analyze things like time complexity, database calls, memory usage, and caching opportunities. For complex apps, I pay close attention to how components interact, tracing end-to-end flows to improve holistic performance vs siloed functions. I look for algorithms that can be refined with techniques like memoization and by leveraging data structures like hash tables. For database calls, I optimize queries, add indexes appropriately, and introduce caching layers. I utilize profiling tools again to measure gains. I’m also continually refactoring to improve code maintainability and testability, which improves velocity over time. Performance optimization requires diligence – I integrate monitoring to catch regressions, and have code reviews focus on performance best practices.

Q: How do you balance speed of development with writing high quality, maintainable code?

A: High iteration velocity and coding quality are compatible through certain best practices:

• Strict, modular architecture enforced through code reviews
• Small, incremental pull requests focused on single responsibility
• Running integrated regression tests often and fixing failures immediately
• Separating experimental features behind toggles to isolate risk
• Investing in comprehensive test suites to prevent regressions
• Developing and adhering to secure coding standards and design patterns
• Proactive monitoring to catch quality issues early
• Allocating dedicated time for tech debt and refactoring
• Fostering shared ownership and accountability for quality
• Incentivizing coding craftsmanship and best practices

With the right architectural foundation, focus on automation, monitoring and shared priorities – teams can release rapidly while maintaining a high coding bar.

Q: How do you stay up-to-date on the latest advancements in your tech stack?

A: I believe consistent learning is imperative as an engineer. Some key ways I stay current:

• Attend conferences and workshops, prioritizing ones focused on my domain or tech stack
• Experiment with new tools, techniques and APIS through proof of concepts and prototyping
• Contribute to open-source communities – learning from other developers while giving back
• Read blogs, mailing lists and documentation from technology vendors for release notes
• Expand my network,