There is nothing quite as annoying as being not able to solve an issue at work. It impacts more than merely the revenue of the company. It impacts your pride, and in few situations can shake the very foundation of what you know about how to do your job.

Or not. It may not do any of that. You may not even care that much. But the company seeking to hire you does need to consider that you have the capability to issue solve and think creatively about challenges that might come up in the workplace.

Behavioral Interview Query: Can you offer me an instance of a situation where you utilized creative or innovative thinking to eradicate frustration with a product or procedure?

This creativity interview query is straight forward. It is seeking for an instance of a time that you indicated creative thinking when approaching uncommon and annoying workplace challenges. In ideal case, you’ve a truthful answer.

What you have to be careful of is the following:

• Sharing an answer that is not very interesting.
• Over-emphasizing the frustration.
• Accusing anyone else for the frustration.

The accurate answer to this query can be very impressive. The wrong answer can make you seem somewhat mad, and surely not creative. It is good to have a plan for this kind of query, particularly if issue solving is going to be a primary part of your role.

Sample Answer

“We were attempting to solve out how to make better our manufacturing procedure. We kept maxing out at 4,000 parts each hour, which was good, but had not improved in about ten years instead of advancement in technology. At most, we were capable to increase production by some dozen.

Instead to look at the machinery as a whole, I went back and analyzed each individual part of the procedure. I discovered something surprising and striking. Historically, machines and computers have been taking over for persons. But I realized that one of the machines was shockingly slow, and the price to maintain the machine was substantial. If we replaced the machine with over five or six individual employees that would put together that one part by hand, we would improve production by various thousand, as the remaining procedure was far more effective and less expensive.

It was a bit of difficult sell to show upper management that replacing a machine with persons would really make better production, but we ran the numbers and we could reach almost 6,000 or more utilizing the new procedure.”

Note that it is not merely about the creative thought, but how you frame it. Most solutions are yet going to have an element of obviousness to them. But if you describe what makes it a creative thought, you will be capable to assist the employer picture how you come up with solutions.