Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team to solve a problem. What role did you play on the team in this situation?

Question

Karrie Day · Accepted Answer

"I worked as a quality assurance intern last summer. I was assigned to a cross functional development team. They were running behind on their project and added extra developers to assist. That meant that there was more to test each week, and the QA analyst who I worked with was already swamped. She had to abandon automation of tests in favor of manually testing as many functions as possible. I have some development experience, and I had been interested in their automated testing tools since joining the team.

I knew that I could help speed things along if I could automate some of the more basic functions of the new features as they were developed. I stayed late one night and gave it a shot. I created several testing scripts to learn the automation tool. I showed them to my colleagues, and they were impressed with my initiative. I ran point on automation for the rest of the summer, and I appreciated the opportunity to add value to the team and the system."

Karrie Day · Answer

Problem-solving with any team can be challenging! Because the global efforts at Boeing to be an innovative and creative leader in the aerospace and defense industries require the ultimate in teamwork, your interviewer wants to hear that you can work as part of a larger team to solve problems on the job.

Karrie Day · Answer

Give an example that shows you are a leader and that you are willing to ask for help when you need it. Humble leaders are hard to come by these days. Present the situation and explain what you and your team did to create optimal results. As well, be sure to talk a bit about the role that you took on as part of that team in solving the problem so your interviewer gets a sense of the type of team player you will be at Boeing.

Rachelle Enns · Answer

"My coworkers and I worked together to resolve a pretty urgent client situation. The issue was with their production process and my organization supported the maintenance of their production equipment. I shared the problem with my coworkers for support. I led the effort in researching their issue and how we could tweak the machinery to fit their new needs. My colleagues helped me back up my research with more facts and information to provide for my client. Together we were able to gather additional information and make a great recommendation to assist my client."

Karrie Day · Answer

"The demand for several of the products my group managed tanked during the pandemic. There were also major supply chain issues. We were in uncharted territory and nobody really knew if we needed to make major adjustments to our production schedules or just give things a little time to settle down. Everyone was stressed at our managers' meetings because our staff had a constant flow of questions, and we did not have answers in many cases.

I worked with my fellow managers to triage the situation. We created a forum for employees to ask questions. We pulled our best supply chain and production management subject matter experts together and let them provide situational guidance. As managers, we reviewed the decisions and provided feedback as necessary. Unfortunately, the pandemic lasted a lot longer than we expected, but we mobilized the right people at the right time to determine our best course of action."

Karrie Day · Answer

"I typically work in a cross functional team setting, and I am the only analyst assigned to the projects I work on. The same is true for most of the other analysts within our department. I felt like we were missing an opportunity to mentor each other and share best practices with other analysts. At the time, I was somewhat new to the company, and I only had a few coworkers I knew well enough to reach out to when questions came up.

I set up meetings with a couple of the managers within our department and asked for their support in setting up a knowledge sharing group amongst the BAs. My request was received well and each manager allotted time for us to get together. I worked with a group of senior analysts to determine the discussion topics for the year. We each took turns presenting information about our systems and the business verticals we supported. We discussed requirement documentation, workflow reengineering, and design techniques. We also saved time in each meeting for freeform Q&A.

My fellow analysts and I really love these meetings, and they have added a lot of value to our project work. I hope the program continues after I move on to my next opportunity, and I am grateful for the relationships I was able to establish with my peers."

Karrie Day · Answer

"I often manage projects that utilize solutions and materials from third party vendors. We recently worked with a vendor who was struggling to integrate properly with some of our technology. The project was at risk of running behind, so I stepped in to see what I could do to help move things along.

Our technical lead informed me that the engineer assigned from their side was fairly inexperienced and taking longer than expected. I reached out to the project manager assigned by the vendor and brought her up to speed on the problem. I asked if she would be willing to speak to her management about assigning a technical lead on their side to oversee the work of their engineer. They freed up a resource to join the combined team and help mentor the junior engineer. They ended up getting everything done on time and upholding the terms of our contract."

Karrie Day · Answer

"I was the lead engineer on an integration project last year. The analyst on our team was new and struggling to properly gather and document the requirements for the project. She needed time to learn the business unit we were working with as well as the data within the systems we were working to integrate. The team was frustrated and our requirement review meetings weren't going well.

I offered to work with her to help her gather the knowledge necessary for the project. I was not an expert on the business, but I was able to help her understand the databases involved and how the data flowed through each system. We took three days and reviewed everything technical she might need to know. Then we spent the other two days of that week shadowing business users to learn about their workflows and how they use the systems.

The knowledge we gained collectively made a huge difference in the project. The requirement quality improvement was noticeable to everyone on the team, and things went much more smoothly from that point on. I'm glad we took a step back and invested the time to get the information the team needed."

Anonymous User · Answer

"I was tasked with updating a green sheet for our shop to minimize the work not related to the shop that is used in the field, such as working from heights, scaffolding, etc. It was my first time doing this, so I used my shop colleagues as resources and asked for their opinions to make the green sheet more user-friendly for them.

I did my walkthrough of the shop and used my judgment on what was necessary to be on the green sheet. Then, after I sat down with my shop colleagues, I took their opinions as well. They had a few more things they believed were not necessary for the shop green sheet, and I finished it up and sent to my boss for implementation.

He felt that it was very well done and we put it into process. The shop employees are much happier with less paperwork, and I had a better understanding of what we did in the shop. We worked together to complete an objective that we both wanted to be changed and implemented."

Anonymous User · Answer

"My coworkers and I worked together to solve a kitchen sink problem. There was an issue with the sink and the water was not properly draining because there was no drain for the water to run out. They helped me with my research in finding resources to eliminate the drain problem."

Anonymous User · Answer

"At my last company, the attitude of my team towards the concept of continuous improvement was poor. In a department of 40 people, only four people were actively involved in any improvement work. There had been attempts to introduce the 5S method of continuous improvement, but they failed.
My task was to increase involvement in continuous improvement from 10% to 100%.The action that I took was to work with an influential team member on a novel way of introducing 5S. This team member and I then presented the technique to the other team members in a humorous and fun way, and we managed to persuade the other members of the team that it was not just about housekeeping.
By doing this, we were able to increase participation from 10% to 100%, which resulted in significant time savings and improved workplace organization."

Anonymous User · Answer

"My fundraising campaign team of 20 volunteers ran into some problems delivering funds to some displaced refugees in Cameroon. I took the following initiatives to ensure proper accountability:

-Created a WhatsApp group and spreadsheet to track how volunteers were distributing resources.

-Volunteers secured to record videos of recipients' acknowledgment of gifts.

-Oversaw submission of daily reports to a regional coordinator for record-keeping and verification."

Anonymous User · Answer

"The situation was to account for a lost warehouse item. The task was to research if the item was actually lost, miscounted, or misplaced. My team's action was to inventory the whole warehouse for a physical count then input it in our inventory count system for live up to date data. The results were a miscount and all items were accounted for accurately."

Anonymous User · Answer

"When I was a roofer, we had some ice and water shield material with some peel-off skin on the sticky side, well it was a very hot summer day and the skin wasn't peeling off, it was actually sticking instead, we all had trouble with it. It wasn't until we had some water from our cooler to drink that it dawned on me to just pour some on the material and it worked."

Anonymous User · Answer

"I was instructed to do an urgent cleaning task in one of the wards in the hospital. However, there was a leakage of water while I was about to start the task that impedes me from doing it. I immediately contacted the engineering department to ask for help urgently. They have asked me if I could stay in there and assist them to prevent further leakage of water all over the floor while they are fixing it. Consequently, they were able to stop the water leakage problem and I was able to prevent the water from flooding the floors of the ward."

Anonymous User · Answer

"While on the supply chain promotions planning team we reviewed toy inventory at the store and DC levels on a daily basis. This task normally took about half the day and we were struggling to find a way to improve the process state. I took initiative and worked closely with my coworkers and manager to understand their approach to completing these reviews. Once I had a strong basis for how their different approaches I began developing an excel that would automate a portion of this review. After a few test runs to tweak and improve the file I brought it to my manager for review. She appreciated the work I had done and went so far as to implement it for our day-to-day use. This resulted in reducing our time spent reviewing these reports exponentially quickly cutting the time required in half."

Anonymous User · Answer

"In my previous role as a business analyst, the company had made enhancements to the pricing system which was causing a disruption on system users entering promotions and markdowns. I was the analyst representing my team to gather as much information from the system engineers that made the enhancements and to relay the complex workaround to the system users. Since the workaround was complex I would need to pay attention to detail, ask questions, and provide clear and detailed information to the business.
I was able to fully understand the enhancements made and able to present the changes to the business by myself."

Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team to solve a problem. What role did you play on the team in this situation?

How to Answer: Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team to solve a problem. What role did you play on the team in this situation?

Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Boeing job interview.

38. Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team to solve a problem. What role did you play on the team in this situation?

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