Practice 30 Department of Veterans Affairs interview questions covering mission commitment, veteran-centered care, and federal service values.
Question 21 of 30
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Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
"I'm all about system implementation for how I do things. In my last job, they asked me to take over ordering supplies. I always made sure I kept a running total of what we had in stock but also forecasted the next three days and how long it would take our orders to arrive. I made sure I had a total number at the end of the order. I would then add up all the running totals to ensure all numbers matched and that there were no mistakes. Mistakes had been an issue in the past but when I ran this area, orders were error-free. The person who took over the ordering from me adapted my system, and eventually, it became a standard. But that is just one example of many where my systems to check and balance my own work ended up adopted to the entire team as a standard."

Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
This question isn't designed to set up an expectation for you to reinvent the wheel the second you're hired. Rather, if hired--once you have a broader sense of how they do things and why they do them--you can let your work experience and ingenuity pour in. They're curious what your answer to this question will reveal about not only your propensity towards innovation but also your propensity towards leadership.

Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
This is an opportunity to highlight what aspects of your work style have benefited from your work environment in the past. Be sure to focus on aspects of your work style that coworkers have borrowed and adapted for themselves, which advertises you as a thought leader.

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Written by Kevin Downey
30 Questions & Answers • Department of Veterans Affairs

By Kevin

By Kevin