At Coinbase we seek to hire leaders. Tell me about a time when you took the initiative to improve work-related procedures.

Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
1st Answer Example
2nd Answer Example
Community Answers

This question is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate your sense of initiative and creativity. Think about a time you proposed a change in the workplace that led to positive effects. It's okay if it was only a small change, especially if you are early on in your career.

"I was able to present and implement one specific change in the office this past year. It was a recycling program that I felt was very important, even for our smaller office. We had significantly less waste after my initiative was implemented, and I enjoyed seeing others take pride in helping our environment."

"I recently made suggestions to my manager about the team messaging application we used. I found a team-based app that offered a lower monthly cost with added features. He took the suggestion, and it has worked well for our team! The company was happy with the cost savings as well."

Anonymous Answer

"It currently takes 6 weeks to issue client communications. I felt this was hugely inefficient both from a time and resource perspective and resulted in a poor client experience. I drew the process out then I pulled my team together and challenged on how we could improve the process. We implemented a process that was repeatable rather than bespoke resulting in a reduction to 2 weeks."

Marcie's Feedback

Awesome! Six weeks definitely seems like a long amount of time, and it's great that you were able to reduce it to two weeks. What exactly did you change in the process to reach this end result? Adding more details will make your answer more memorable to the interviewer. Great job!

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Anonymous Answer

"While setting up the technical architecture for publishing the ______ applications, the client wanted to buy two licenses of ______ professional versions each of which costs about 3300 USD. 1 for staging and the other for production environments. I was candid enough to save the client from going for an additional license as the same architecture can be achieved using one account."

Marcie's Feedback

While this example clearly shows your honesty and how you helped a client (which is great!), it doesn't necessarily show how you improved a work procedure. Have you ever noticed an inefficiency in a process at work that you fixed? Perhaps you identified a way to save time or money for the company? Pick an example like this to talk about here and if you can't think of any professional examples, consider if there's a personal one you can discuss instead. The important thing is to show the interviewer that you're capable of identifying procedural inefficiencies and taking the initiative to fix them. Good job!