Job Interview Questions that Assess Creativity
Often recruiters ask job applicants questions that relate to testing their creative thinking skills, that is, the extent to which they can think fast, create priorities or express curiosity and ability to transcend traditional ideas to new and meaningful way of working or doing things. It gives them insight on how applicant reacts and utilises resources available to solve or improve things for better. A good question the recruiter may use to find out whether you are creative is to ask 'outline the change or solution you came up with and implemented - explain why you felt this change or solution was beneficial’. Would you be confident to answer this question up to hiring manager expectations? Remember, number of senior managers or directors hold that if you cannot provide specific example of your achievements from previous job and the way they were achieved you are probably not an all-star. Hence times and times again preparation is the key to success.
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Tips to answer questions assessing creativity
To answer the above mentioned question well and come across as capable creative individual who is well able to invent new ways of defining things, talk about the initiative you took in your last job to improve business and the way you changed things for better. In your answer, demonstrate that you can identify areas of improvement and drive business forward in a way which is both different and better than how things are done at present. Show that you can detect new and unexploited opportunities or gaps left in current practices. Make it evident that you can move business forward by taking a new innovative approach based on a new ways of seeing things. This represents the potential to serve your customers, stakeholders and the organization better than the way they are served. For further advice on taking innovative approach see interview questions on innovation. Nevertheless, to demonstrate the above consider the below sample answer.
Sample Answer
Situation
At my last job working as a customer service specialist, after sales support unit was receiving numerous correspondence to provide assistance to wide range of clients who often seem to contact whomever they thought would help. I saw that contacting random employees was interrupting personnel not only when the initial calls were taken but also when customers enquired about the status of their orders.
Action
I established that if the single point of contact for any customer would be implemented and calls would be routed to relevant teams along with the list of open complaints where automatic e-mail would be regularly sent to customers advising them the status of their orders the customer service level along with the employee productivity would increase. In terms of cost analysis I did work out that the cost of the time and resources to switch to the above system were relatively minimal to the benefits it would bring. To implement this, I did present and discussed the initial plan with upper management and did get approval to go ahead with implementation.
Result
Once the system was in place not only the ambiguity for our customers over to who to contact vanished but also the economic costs resulting in redundant responses and efforts of our personnel were eliminated. Since that time, the productivity of staff has increased and after sales department has received consistently high customer satisfaction score.
Final thoughts…
To prepare your own answer for similar interview questions use S.T.A.R answer format in the same way as it is used in the above answer. Briefly define the problem, describe its impact, provide suggestions and demonstrate the way you solved the problem. These steps will help you to develop the clear and impressive answer the employer would be looking for.