Give me an example of a time you had to solve a problem without all of the necessary information.
"When I joined my current organization, I took on a vacant customer service role with a backlog of work that needed addressing in addition to my daily activities. The interim rep before me only kept brief notes on daily visitors and calls rather than appropriately logging them, and a lot of information was missing. Additionally, once onboarded, I realized my current workload wouldn't permit catching up on the backlog. I had ideas of how to address this and approached my supervisor. We agreed to plug in the fields we had the information for and leave the others blank. I put in overtime, logged hours into our system from home, and completed this basic data entry as overtime."
"A couple of months ago, I fielded a call from a colleague's client while she was on vacation. This client had several questions about their finances, which I couldn't resolve with the information I had. I informed them their advisor was on vacation but assured them I'd find the answers to their questions within the hour. The client found this acceptable, and I dug in, learned what I needed to, and got back to them within 15 minutes."
"Time is money, and I take the money I earn seriously and approach it with integrity. That's the point of working in a fast-paced environment. You can't be timid and wait for someone to make decisions for you based on the same information you have. I firmly believe that a good plan today is better than a better one tomorrow. I don't think it is wise to be rash. Risk requires calculation and care, working smarter, not harder. When evaluating your surroundings, more often than not, you realize you have more on hand than you originally thought. Sometimes you realize, after the fact, you could have done things a little better, and you take that and learn from it and earn your keep."
This question focuses on your work style and approach - primarily, your analytical skills, attention to detail, resourcefulness, and ability to think outside the box. Consider what problem-solving means to you based on your experiences. Think about your work approach in such situations, whether you try to find the missing information before proceeding or take the information you have on hand and take calculated risks. Lastly, be ready to answer how you would evaluate and justify such risks. The goal is to appraise your approach by your success, in which case this question can be viewed as yet another opportunity to showcase your merits. Remember, Square centers its business on 'finding business solutions.'
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