Question: Describe a time when a positive change in the workplace occurred due to your initiative.

Alternative Question Phrasing:

Tell me about a time when your initiative caused a change to occur.
Describe a time when you took the initiative to improve a work process and it turned out for the better.

Follow-up questions:

What inspired the idea?
What was the outcome?
How did you handle the objections along the way?
How is the initiative now?
How did you handle the roadblocks along the way?
What motivated you to push your idea out?

Question Details:

Question Type:

Behavioral

Skills:

Basic – Critical Thinking,Systems Analysis,Systems Evaluation

Abilities:

Cognitive – Category Flexibility (Mental Flexibility),Cognitive – Flexibility of Closure (Pattern Detection),Cognitive – Fluency of Ideas (Idea Generation Frequency),Cognitive – Inductive Reasoning,Cognitive – Originality,Cognitive – Problem Sensitivity (Problem Recognition)

Other Factors:

Big 5 – Openness to Experience (Open Mindedness)

Work Activity (Task):

Interacting with Others – Innovation Management,Mental Processes – Developing Objectives and Strategies,Mental Processes – Judging the Value of Things, Services, or People,Mental Processes – Making Decisions and Solving Problems,Mental Processes – Thinking Creatively (Creativity),Work Output – Quality Improvement

Work Style (Person-Job Fit):

Initiative,Innovation

Question Frequency

Question Difficulty

What to look for in an answer:

You are looking for the interviewee’s ability to recognize a problem, their initiative and innovation to think of a solution, and their ability to implement the solution.

Red Flags to Watch For:

A red flag is if the interviewee has no such experience with no good reason for the lack thereof. A lesser possible red flag is if the interviewee started on the process of taking the initiative but was unable to succeed for whatever reason.

Sample Answer:

N/A

Question Source: https://www.zippia.com/employer/behavioural-interview-questions/