During job interviews, potential employers often ask candidates to describe a time when they have demonstrated their initiative and/or results-driven skills. Let’s practice answering this question!
- In paragraph 1, describe a time at work, home, or school when there was a problem, and you took the initiative to solve that problem and to seek results on your own.
- In paragraph 2, explain how the process went and describe the solution that you developed.
Before you post, remember these rules:
- Professionalism: Using personal examples within discussions is encouraged in the course. However, please remember to share only appropriate topics that you might also share with a colleague, potential employer, or professor. Ask yourself, “Would I share this example in an interview?” If the answer is no, refrain from sharing it here.
- Respond with respect: Respond to at least one learner in the class by offering thoughtful ideas and respectfully asking follow-up questions. This is a learning community where your peers and myself will learn and grow from reading your posts. Be mindful of your tone when responding to the main prompt and your peers.
- Proofread: While discussions are less formal than papers, this is an academic environment, and your writing will be assessed. Please be careful to check your grammar/spelling.
Need help with writing?
Optional: Want to submit a video or audio response instead? How to Respond to a Discussion Using Video or Audio with Kaltura [PDF]
Watch the video below to help you get started with this week’s discussion:
THIS IS A SAMPLE OF WHAT A STRONG DISCUSSION POST MIGHT LOOK LIKE
I’m now an assistant manager at a pizza place, but I started out by delivering pizzas. When I first started, my boss told me there was a problem with customers trying to get drivers to break $100 bills, even though we’re only allowed to carry $20 change on a delivery. She said some drivers wanted to carry extra change so they wouldn’t lose the sale or their tip after driving all the way to a house. She said I would be written up if caught doing this. I was worried about making the customer angry the first time it happened to me. The guy said he had no idea about the policy and was embarrassed that he only had a $50 dollar bill. He finally wrote me a check with a tip for the hassle, but it made me think that we needed to tell our customers ahead of time, and then maybe we wouldn’t have such a problem with it.
At our next team meeting, I took the initiative and proposed that we train our order takers to tell customers about the policy while taking their orders. My boss was skeptical, but then other drivers jumped in to share their experiences with customers who’d been irritated to find out last-minute that they couldn’t use big bills to pay for their order. She finally said she was willing to give it a try. We never had any official records, of course, but now that I’m a manager I can say that I’ve only ever had one or two drivers come to me and tell me that a customer has tried to give them a big bill anyway. At this point, all of the new people have been trained this way, and it’s as if the problem never existed in the first place.
THIS IS A SAMPLE OF WHAT A STRONG PEER REPLY MIGHT LOOK LIKE
Hi, [classmate name].
I enjoyed reading about how you took the initiative to solve a problem at your work. I’ve been in a similar situation at my work where people complain about a problem, but nothing gets done until we finally talk about it and create a new policy. You can’t blame those customers for getting upset if they don’t know about a policy. Did you post the new policy on the restaurant’s website too?