I want you to tell me about a time you showed initiative.

Question Analysis

This is a behavioral interview question that seeks to understand your ability to take initiative. The interviewer is interested in learning about situations where you proactively addressed a problem or opportunity without being prompted by others. They want to assess your self-motivation, problem-solving skills, and ability to act independently. To effectively answer this question, use the STAR method to structure your response: Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

Answer

Situation: At my previous job, our team was responsible for managing customer support inquiries, and I noticed that our response times were longer than our company standards, leading to customer dissatisfaction.

Task: I decided to take the initiative to address this issue by finding a way to streamline our process and improve response times without being asked by my manager.

Action: I analyzed the current workflow and identified that the main bottleneck was the manual assignment of inquiries to support agents. I proposed and implemented a new system that automatically assigned inquiries based on the agents' availability and expertise. I also organized a training session to help the team adapt to the new system.

Result: As a result of these changes, our response times improved by 30%, and customer satisfaction scores increased significantly. My initiative not only enhanced our team's efficiency but also demonstrated my ability to identify and solve problems proactively.