Page 111 - How To Answer Interview Questions (II)

Job Interview Question 55

Tell me about a time you had to take initiative

Employerswant someone who can take initiative.Do you have creativity to come up with good
ideas? Do you have the decision-making ability and good judgment to take appropriate initiative
and the skill set to execute on it and be successful?

Use the STAR format:
Situation or Task –
Often in this situation, there would be some sort of urgency where there’s no
time to discussa solution with your boss—but not always. This could be a
nagging problem or some other situation where you thought, “Hey, I can fix this.”
Action –
What plan did you come up with? How did you think through it? Did you
consider other options? What made you decide to choose the one you did?
Result –
How did the situation improve or resolve? Can you quantify it?
For instance:
“I once had a very angry customer come to me with an unusual problem, X. This
wasn’t something I had been trained to deal with, but based on our process for
handling similar situations, I realized that I could offer a new solution for this
particular customer’s problem without costing the company any extra money.
[Give details about the solution here.] So, the company didn’t lose any money,
and we kept an important customer, who later came back and ordered another