Tell me about a time when there were many possible solutions to a problem and you chose one.
Question Explain
In essence, this question is asking for the interviewee to showcase their decision-making skills, critical thinking abilities and judgment. The interviewer wants to understand how you navigate scenarios where there are multiple potential paths to take. The aim is to highlight your thought process and justify the action you took.
When answering this question, remember to:
- Briefly describe the situation or the problem that you had to solve.
- Discuss the different options that you had at your disposal.
- Explain why you chose the particular option.
- Mention what the outcome was after implementing your selected option.
- Talk about what you learned from the experience.
Answer Example 1
In my previous role as a project manager in a software company, our team was tasked with developing a mobile application for a client within three months. However, two weeks into the project, one of our key developers left the company without notice, creating a significant gap in our resources and posing a risk to our deadline.
Several potential solutions were available: hiring a new developer, redistributing the work amongst the remaining team members, or outsourcing the role to a freelancer.
Hiring a new developer would take time. Redistributing the workload amongst the team may have overstressed them, potentially causing burnout and reduced quality of work. After assessing the pros and cons, I chose to outsource the role to a highly recommended freelance developer.
This allowed us to stay on schedule without overburdening the team. The project was completed on time, and the client was highly satisfied with the end product. From this scenario, I learned the importance of flexible resource allocation when facing unexpected personnel changes.
Answer Example 2
When I was a product manager at a logistics company, we faced an issue with the functionality of one of our key products causing significant customer dissatisfaction.
There were several options to tackle this: implementing a simple short-term fix that would please our customers initially, completely overhauling the product to solve the underlying issue and future-proofing the product, or pushing the update to the next product release because we were understaffed and already had a heavy workload.
After discussions with the team and considering potential long term outcomes, I decided on the second option, which was to overhaul the product completely.
This decision was not an easy one. The overhaul would take a significant amount of time and resources, but it was vital for the long-term success of our product and our reputation with the clients.
The overhaul involved a lot of hard work, but in the end, our clients were pleased with the improved functionality and we saw a significant decrease in customer complaints. This experience taught me to take a long-term view and think strategically about problem-solving.
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