When have you had to think outside of the box to solve a problem?
Innovation is integral to leadership. The interviewer wants to measure your preferred working style and whether it meets their required criteria. They want to know how resourceful you are and whether you exhibit outside-of-the-box thinking.
Some problems arise at inopportune times, and some can only be solved through creative and unconventional means. Whether the supervisor you'd normally lean on to solve a type of problem wasn't there to make a split-second decision or the solution went beyond the scope of the resource material you had on hand, you want your answer to exhibit determination. Describe your thought process while calculating the risks that led to your course of action. Some more urgent issues require us to think fast on our feet. They aim to recruit the best candidates, not the everyday status quo employee.
Being unique in your example can exemplify you as an attractive prospective employee. Offering trivial or commonplace problems you'd see in an everyday setting will present you as an average employee. Talk to the interviewer about a time you solved a problem creatively and the positive effect it had on your team. Make sure your example reflects respecting the chain of command - initiative versus presumption.
"In my current position, we saw a decrease in clients due to a local economic downturn. I recommended to our head office that we begin to generate business outside of our region for the first time in many years. They agreed, and the idea turned things around for us that fiscal year."
"I once had to deal with a space issue in our warehouse. We arranged and re-arranged several times and could not make it work. I thought outside the box and rented some outside pod storage until we returned to normal inventory levels."
Community answers are written by other candidates practicing this set. Reading how others frame the same question is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.
Anonymous Answer
In my previous company all lot of the accounting was generated by intercompany transaction this was going on for a year and generated an overload of the accounting department. This was accepted as a reality. I have initiated a discussion with legal to see to analyse whether the legal structure could be simplified, which led to considerable savings.
Rachelle's Feedback
Very nice start! Referring to previous feedback, 'When have you...' style questions are also behavioral-based, so the interviewer is asking you to provide them with a specific story. Be sure to outline the general Situation, your Task, the Action that you took, and the overall Result (STAR).
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