Not every role offers the opportunity to invent new and exciting technology, but all roles offer an opportunity to improve processes and/or make adjustments that add value. Describe a time in which you tried something new that generated a benefit.

"In my current role, one of the administrative teams that support an operations group spent a large number of hours every week chasing people down to answer questions necessary for executive reporting. The thought at the time was that the operations individuals involved didn't understand the process and the easiest way to meet the reporting needs was to ask them questions as needed.

I took a step back and looked for the root cause. I spoke with the operations team and they indicated that nobody had ever walked them through the reporting process and they we unclear on how their work fit into it. I set up a series of meetings to walk them through the executive reports and how they are calculated. I also trained them on some of our BI tools that allowed them to look at the numbers for their areas before they were compiled for the executive reports.

Taking the time to properly educate them and let them take an active role in the process resulted in a 60% reduction in the time the admins spent chasing down information week-to-week. My clients were grateful I took a think-outside-the-box approach as it led to significant time and cost savings."

"I have worked in a defense product assembly plant for the last two years. I noticed that a lot of time was spent moving certain pieces of equipment around between the various teams in our location. I went to my manager and asked if we could rethink the way we were using the equipment to reduce movement waste. He agreed and we devised a plan to arrange our work so that our team could have the equipment in the morning and the other team could have it in the afternoon. Our change was so successful that the managers of the second shift implemented the same change."