Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all the information you needed.

"In my current role, I am responsible for creating the weekly schedule for 56 staff members. When I first took on the responsibility of scheduling, I did not have any data regarding our busiest times of the week and day. I had to guesstimate our customer traffic while remaining under the staffing budget and, at the same time, not understaffing. I used my logic and critical thinking skills to fill in the blanks for the data that I did not have. It worked out quite well for me. Now I fully understand our customer traffic flow which has made staff scheduling a breeze."

"As an executive assistant, ambiguity is a large part of my daily reality. I always do the best with the information I have to keep things moving. I often find myself making decisions wishing I had just a little bit more data. In these cases, I look at everything I have, create what-if scenarios for several variables and select the best possible option."

"Before my company had an HR department, I had to make executive decisions related to hiring and terminating. The information I was often missing were some of the questions a candidate would ask, such as details on benefits, for example. I was able to connect with an account representative of the benefits company, and they agreed to be the first point of contact for any questions by those being on-boarded."

"Often, our clients are vague on their needs because they don't fully know themselves what they seek. I have had to fill in the blanks many times. I always know my clients well so I am comfortable making executive decisions when they cannot."

"Often when a customer dispute arises, I only have a piece of the puzzle to go off of, whether because they haven't given the full story, or I'm pulled in by the associate who heard the full story. In either case, it's something I'm accustomed to and deal with daily. I assess quickly what category the problem seems to fall in, and go from there. Nine times out of ten, my first assessment was right. I solve the issue from there."

"Once, I had a customer looking for a particular piece of inventory, and it was hard to source. Nationwide, there were only two products that met the criteria and both were seemingly identical, but I had to choose which was better to purchase on his behalf. With a price tag of $50k+, it was a significant decision to make, since we would have to absorb the difference if there were damages or issues with the unit. I was able to use my industry knowledge, and understanding of the different types of sellers, as well as my instinct on how my buyer would have thought through the situation to choose the piece of inventory. By using context and prior knowledge, as well as a bit of inference, I was able to make the purchase that resulted in a pleased customer."

"For years the department didn't have any way to quantify if our teaching methods were effective. Two years ago, I proposed that we set up four tests throughout the year to test cumulative knowledge. That summer, we sat down and wrote those tests and have been using them since. Now we shape all of our curriculum decisions off of actual data instead of having to disagree with or follow a gut feeling."

"As a temporary staffing recruiter, ambiguity is a large part of my daily reality. I always do the best with the information I have to keep things moving. I often find myself making decisions wishing I had just a little bit more data. In these cases, I look at everything I have, create what-if scenarios for several variables and select the best possible option."

"As an executive recruiter, ambiguity is a large part of my daily reality. I always do the best with the information I have to keep projects moving. I often find myself making decisions wishing I had just a little bit more data. In these cases, I look at everything I have, create what-if scenarios for several variables and select the best possible option."

"I make small decisions quickly every day. For example, deciding what outfit to wear, what breakfast cereal I want to eat, or what time I want to leave my house each morning. Other decisions take a few minutes of thought such as putting my to-do list into a logical order for the day. I need to take into account project deadlines and how long the project will take to complete. And, some decisions take a few days, weeks, or months to make. For example, if I am tasked with selecting a new training software, I will need time to review demos, talk to other customers of the product, and analyze our budget before making a decision. It just depends on how large the decision is!"

"In short, debugging is an important part of determining why an operating system, application or program is behaving abnormally. When I do debugging, there are many things that I take into account during this process. For larger lines of code, I conduct unit testing and pair programming which helps me identify bugs at an earlier stage. I also use the stand alone debugger tool to further identify bugs. I've always been conscious of my work, and only want to put out top quality work. To further understand where bugs may reside, I also look at the module to see if the problem avails itself. If not, I set up a 'breakpoint' and run a program to see it run its course. After performing debugging and testing, I do come across errors which I address and correct immediately. Some examples are...Syntax errors, Runtime errors, Logic errors, Semantic errors, etc."

"Last month during a standard procedure we had a very important piece of equipment fail. I asked permission to leave the OR and quickly located another machine. The Doctor was happy that, rather than panicking or trying to make the faulty equipment work, I sprung into action to create an immediate resolution."