Behavioral Interview Questions Flashcards
Tell me about a time when you took initiative to go above and beyond for a customer or Tell me about a time you wouldn’t compromise on achieving a great outcome when others felt something was already good enough.
- Customer Obsession
- Ownership - went beyond scope of role and status quo.
- Are Right A Lot
- Insist on Highest Standards
- Think Big
- Bias for Action - decided with limited certainty that airport would be the van on my books
I can tell you about a time when I had to be resourceful and be an independent thinker to go against the status quo and not settle.
15-Passenger Van Story
[Situation]
When I worked at a satellite branch at Enterprise, a customer ordered a 15-passenger van which neighborhood branch locations NEVER have.
My manager told me that the only solution for this customer is for him to rent out several cars or SUVs. That was the status quo for these types of situations. My customer was not happy with this solution.
[Task]
So my goal was to make sure I got the sale and that the customer was satisfied with his rental experience. Making sure the customer is satisfied with their rental experience is important, because ask and track customer responses when they return the rental and because Enterprise does calls to randomly selected renters to ask them to rate their experience. Luckily being promoted to work at that satellite branch alone had given me the confidence to problem-solve independently.
[Action]
1) So I came up with a plan to pick up a 15 passenger van for the customer myself. This was unheard of to make a trip to the airport to get a car, because typically we would just tell the customer to go to the airport, but then I wouldn’t get the sale.
2) Of course I informed my manager of my plan to get her approval and followed up with the customer to keep him abreast of the timeline.
3) I couldn’t close my branch in the middle of the day because I was the only one working at that branch so after work, I drove to Ft Lauderdale airport and talked to an Enterprise manager there. This was a risk because I was relying on persuading her to put that van on my books. I knew if I had called ahead and just asked I would have gotten a no.
[Result]
I was able to persuade her and I got the customer on his way in a 15 passenger van and secured the sale and insurance sale. This was win a win.
Explain a time when you took initiative to create and oversee large procedure or process?
- Ownership
- Frugality
- Bias for Action
- Earn Trust
- Dive Deep
- Deliver Results
- Are Right, A Lot
- Invent and Simplify
- Customer Obsession
Internal Workflow Story
[Situation]
In 2017 at Aux Patents, we had a 63% increase in cases compared to the previous year. This was great except that we were severely backed up with work to the point that clients were complaining. At best we were losing respect and trust from clients, at worst we were at risk of losing their business altogether.
[Task]
From the outside I think it’s easy to get the impression that either our drafters weren’t working fast enough or that the increase in work meant we needed to hire more drafters.
But I had some tell tell signs that our internal workflow just needed to be scaled to meet demands of the influx of work. We needed to update our internal workflow processes to take into account the increase in workload.
My Chief Patent Engineer was busy with technical work and didn’t have time to oversee the overhaul of our workflow so lead this initiative. I created a new internal workflow for managing all of our projects to keep us on top of deadlines. In order to do this, I took several steps.
[Action]
First, I clarified our goal and created a plan to work backwards starting at the goal, which was to beat deadlines in order to exceed client expectations.
Second, I probed deeper to fully grasp every step in our current workflow, as it was clear that a birds-eye view wouldn’t provide a detailed perspective in order to streamline basic tasks with automation and eliminate bottlenecks.
What I observed we needed a pipeline for our cases because a lot of cases were in limbo for no reason, there were also bottlenecks where one person was waiting on another person to finish their part of a project and then had nothing on their plate. Which was counter to what was being communicated which was hurry up and get xyz done, but it in reality it was more of a hurry up and wait environment.
I also identified that my chief patent engineer was bogged down with work that was 100% in my abilities to take over for him. Which was mostly related to managing his inbox, from answering non technical questions to sending status updates.
Also I implemented Lookout Points, because I was assigning projects.
Third, I brainstormed and researched solutions for constructing a new procedure. I asked lots of questions: what did and didn’t work with our current procedure and what assumptions was I bringing to the table that were interfering. I reached out to other experiences of disciplines for input.
Finally, I got to work implementing the new digital workflow. This step included creating and monitoring metrics on the number of cases that were being completed before their deadlines to ensure the new procedure met our goal, and constructing a collaborative cloud-based spreadsheet to automatically notify members when it was their turn to jump on a project upon a preceding task having been completed.
[Result]
The result was that we’ve been able to beat deadlines consistently since then. The project pipeline for our big cases takes 8 weeks or 56 days. In 2019, our average turnaround was 43 days. Year to date, our average turnaround is 24 days. We were also able to use this comeback story later when negotiating pricing with a client.
Tell me about a time where you had to perform tasks to accomplish a goal where the instructions were ambiguous?
[Situation]
When I was a personal care aide for my client Virginia, her and her daughter had never hired a caregiver before and I had never been a caregiver though I had been a receptionist at a Retirement Community, so none of us had clear expectations on what I should do besides make sure that I take her to doctor’s appointments.
[Task]
I think creating my own semblance of structure in any environment allows me to be more effective especially since I a have a tendency to be task oriented.
[Action]
So I created a calendar and a journal and jotted down anything that would come up throughout my time working with her that could be a pain point that I could take charge of. This actually allowed me to get more work. And before long a had a list of daily and weekly tasks.
[Results]
Virginia ended up in hospice care. But later her daughter reached out to me to thank me for how organized I was, she said it was an overwhelming time to go through her mom’s stuff to sell her mom’s home but having my journal and calendar of events came in handy for her in really important ways.
Give me an example of a process improvement your were responsible for.
Invent and Simplify Ownership Customer Obsession Insist on Highest Standards Think Big Bias for Action Deliver Results
[Situation]
When I was an intern at Worksystems Inc (a non profit that’s funded by the Department of Labor) I was logistics coordinator responsible for a program that set up tours for ninth graders. Part of this role involved lots of emails back and forth with teachers to keep them abreast of upcoming tours.
[Task]
This was time-consuming for me and not convenient for the teachers nor their inboxes.
[Action]
I decided to set up a website that would show a spreadsheet for each classroom and made it available on a password protected part of a website that I created with one of those free website platforms. I worked on this on my freetime over the weekend.
[Results]
The teachers were able to check the website at their convenience and didn’t need constant status updates or reminder emails from me. My boss was very excited about this so much that he asked his boss if I could do my performance review early.
This saved me lots of time so I was able to organize their computer files after 3 years of it being in
use with the program and create a playbook for future interns to follow so the supervisor could focus on his job.
Tell me about a time you handled a difficult customer.
Customer Obsession Ownership Invent and Simplify Insist on High Standards Dive Deep Are Right, A Lot Learn and Be Curious Bias for Action Earn Trust Have Backbone Disagree Commit Deliver Results
[Situation]
When I worked at the an Enterprise airport location I had a customer come in once who looked like she was having a bad day or a bad year. She was dressed in a suit and a frown and the first thing she said to me was “I don’t want your insurance, I don’t want to talk just I just want to get in my car and go” And to top it, she wanted a very specific car which we didn’t have on the lot. I don’t remember the make and model but I do remember that it was in our premium category.
[Task]
[Action]
First thing I remind myself in situations like this, is to never take it personally because if I’m emotional then that takes away my power to think like a problem solver.
I tried to appeal to her need for time so I said it looks like you’re short on time, can I get you going in one of the cars we have on the lot now.
No, she tells me that every time she comes here she always gets the car she wants and demanded I get her a specific make and model.
I typically avoid escalating problems to my manager unless I’ve exhausted my options but she wasn’t playing ball with my solutions so I let my manager know what the problem was and what I had done to resolve it to bring him up to speed.
[Results]
My manager let me know that he had seen this customer several times before and that she’s always like this and he just tries to get her out as fast as possible. So he called down to the garage and we basically waited for her the car she wanted to be found, cleaned and brought up.
I didn’t see this as a sensible solution for anyone involved including my other team members who would have to work with her in the future. My team is also my customer and having negative experiences like this is bad for morale.
So, obviously I was knowledgeable about Enterprise products, so I informed the customer that Enterprise also owns National Car Rental, which is actually tailored for business customers who want a contactless experience and a top tier car selection.
Eventually the car she wanted arrived on our lot. I don’t know if she ever took my advice to use National Car rental, but clearly she was struggling to make a service fit when we had service next to us that would better suit her.
So in summary when dealing with difficult customers, don’t take it personally, I determine the problem and try to solve in with whatever power I have, if I need to escalate it to a manager I make sure that I’ve tried enough solutions so I can come to them with those solutions, I make sure to offer a solution that will prevent the customer from having a bad experience again and prevent a team member from also having a bad experience. If a team member needs to touch the same problem that I touched, that means that I didn’t solve it.
Tell me about a time you said “no” to a manager or Describe a decision you made that was unpopular or Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a supervisor.
I had just transferred from an Enterprise Branch in Oregon to a Branch in Florida
My assistant manager asked me to fudge some numbers on a customer’s rental contract to get an insurance sale
Now you should know that Enterprise is a very scrappy environment, they hire tons of people fresh out of college and sell them this dream that if they have good sales numbers they can move to assistant manager, to branch manager, to area manager, to regional manager in several years
So the culture is definitely sink or swim and people are willing to do anything to swim
I took the customer to his rental car to get him checked in and it wasn’t a difficult decision to make because it was instinctual for me, while I didn’t want to let my asst manager down and the branch with low branch sales, this could blow up into a customer service problem and it would definitely paint myself and branch as sketchy and I didn’t want to be apart of that. So I used my best sales pitch to try to convince the customer to accept the insurance, he was adamant that he didn’t want. I didn’t sell him. So I didn’t add the insurance to the contract. I had to walk into the branch and face my manager and tell her that I didn’t sell the customer so I didn’t put the insurance on there.
But I’m still happy about my decision to this day, the only thing I wish I could change is that I actually legitimately sold him on the insurance.
I thought about it more at the end of the day and came to the conclusion that my manager wouldn’t have needed to ask me to do something like that if my sales were consistently strong, so I decided to shadow her more and do research and practice on my on time so she would never need to feel compelled to ask me to do something like that.
Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a complex problem.
Simple Formula Story
[Situation]
When we started hiring more engineers as contractors…
[Task]
I was tasked with ensuring that the company met our minimum profit off of each project that the contractors worked on. Whether that meant paying them less or implementing some type of training program to reduce the amount of time that my Chief Patent Engineer needed to review their work.
[Action]
Based on my research we couldn’t train contractors because the IRS might categorize them as employees, and paying them less seemed to me like it would hurt our relationships with them and backfire in the long term no matter how much money it would save us upfront.
So I came up with a really simple solution: spreadsheet formulas.
Formulas are really awesome because you can start small and overtime create something really powerful for immediate insight.
I created formulas to determine which projects would be profitable with which contractors. With these formulas, I was able to input the project budget and a buffer time for my chief patent engineer’s review, and the current rates for the contractors.
[Result]
The result was that the data identified that Office Action Responses didn’t provide enough profit or flexibility to assign out to contractors. We were able to proceed assigning all other cases to contractors and didn’t lose money by assigning out Office Action Responses.
Tell me about a time you took a risk and it failed. What did you learn? What would you do differently?
Are Right, A Lot Invent and Simplify Hire and Develop the Best Think Big Bias for Action Deliver Results
Technical Writers as Contractors vs Employees Story
[Situation]
We needed to hire technical writers at Aux Patents. I was given advice that for startups or small businesses in many cases it’s best to hire contractors.
[Task]
So my task was to hire new technical writers. However, I saw benefits in having an employee who we could invest time in their training and they would in return be more dedicated and hardworking. Also we would have more control over their work product, something that’s not possible with contractors.
[Action]
So that’s what I did, I hired two employees.
And spoiler alert, they didn’t work out. This cost us time and money, from the onboarding process to training to paperwork to payroll and taxes.
[Results]
So of course I pivoted to hiring contractors which was a much faster process and didn’t involve added payroll and tax expenses. Moreover, the new contractors were very dedicated and hardworking based on feedback from my Chief Patent Engineer.
What I learned from that experience was to be honest about our resources and to really break down problems to their fundamental truths to dismantle my own biases.
If I were to relive that experience I would be more critical of the reasons behind the decision I’m making to ensure I’m not making decisions based on false biases especially in situations where I’ve been given advice counter to what I believe is the best decision.
Tell me about a time you were working on an initiative or goal and saw an opportunity to do something much bigger than the initial focus.
[Situation]
When I was editor in chief for a journal publication at Warner Pacific College a group of our team didn’t agree with a design direction that myself and our design editor was going in. It became a debate that stopped work from moving forward.
[Task]
Obviously as the Editor in Chief I wanted to find a solution for us to move forward.
[Action]
My initial reaction was to reach out to any authority figure on the matter such as local publication companies, local journals and magazine companies.
But I saw an opportunity for our journal to be on the radar of these established companies.
So I emailed some local publication companies and journals. Three got back to me with advice which I brought to my team and we were able to move forward.
I thanked the contacts for their advice, let them know what we decided and added them in our Acknowledgments section of our book.
After we had physical copies of our book I sent them free copies so that what we were doing would be on their radar.
[Results]
I let my professor know and she thought it was a great idea that I opened discussions with this outside organizations and let me know that she would follow up with them about possible collaborations with the humanities department.
Tell me about a time when you handled a challenging situation or Tell me about the toughest decision you’ve had to make in the past six months or Describe a situation in which you used good judgment and logic to solve a problem.
[Situation]
Last year our largest client decided to scale back our services in favor of hiring a his own team of in-house drafters.
[Task]
So I had to come up with a strategy to adjust our terms or risk losing a major client.
I didn’t have any previous negotiation experience but I needed to lead this because my chief patent engineer was emotionally involved to a degree that we both thought would jeopardize a positive outcome–he felt that this attorney owed us based on how many favors we had done for them in the past.
[Action]
I did extensive research about negotiation tactics in several days and my determined that my best strategy was to listen.
The chief patent engineer and I had a meeting with the lawyer and his lead patent engineer.
Long story short, we didn’t come to any agreement at the end of that meeting.
But that was part of my plan. By going in with the strategy to just listen I was able to read between the lines and identify that attorney’s pain points.
I took what I had learned from the meeting and came up with new terms that would benefit us but also would incorporate solving the attorney’s paint points. I got these terms approved and sent them to the attorney and he agreed to them.
[Result]
Originally our terms were $35 an hour for admin work, $75 an hour for technical consulting and 25% of their legal fee for patent drafting cases.
Our new terms were $124 across the board for admin, technical consulting and patent drafting. With the stipulation that we would handle their worse cases: basically all of their rushed cases, their complex cases–cases that their inhouse lawyers didn’t want to work on.
This ultimately meant that we had a reduction in volume of work and a reduction in total sales from this client but we didn’t lose a client, and as a matter of fact this year they lost two of their lawyers who were drafting for them and they started to give us more cases and they felt the terms were still fair and didn’t want to adjust them.
You start on Monday but nobody is in the office to train you. What do you ask your boss when he returns a week later?
So I’ve definitely been in these sink or swim kind of scenarios. Off the top of my head 1. When I was a volunteer for a campaign I didn’t know what my role would be until I arrived at the office and found out they wanted me to do door to door canvassing alone with nothing but a list of addresses and brochures, no training. 2) when I was a personal care aide for my clients Virginia her daughter had hired me and they had never hired a aide before and therefore wasn’t really clear on their expectations. 3) when I was told by my current company to go to a uspto event with no instructions or goals for what I should get out of my attendance. So I’ve definitely experienced these kind of sink or swim situations. From my experiences I know that once you’re in the context it’s really easy to pinpoint a focus and cut off the fat, for instance when I went to the uspto conference I initially thought I could make an impact by finding new clients but was I was there I realized it was an academic environment and would be inappropriate to do any hard sales.
So if my boss was gone and I has no training, I could learn from my environment by studying his calendar, studying whatever I have available at my desk or on my computer like emails and software and talking to other EAs. Obviously people will contact or approach me with questions that would help me to further create a mental model of my role. Of course utilizing resources like IT.
When my boss returns hopeful I would have intelligent questions by that point like I answered these emails but received a follow up questions and found a possible answer here, is this an update source to get information from. Also as a follow up I would want to know about any critical tasks or deadlines that didnt make it on my radar during the week.
My next goal would be to quietly shadow them as much as possible to have insight into their style and develop an understanding of their job and priorities. Also I would see if they wanted to debrief about their trip assuming it was a business trip. The working relationship I have with my boss is and the one-on-one dynamics are so important so I definitely wouldn’t want to waste time with questions that show lack of initiative and competence.
Tell me about a piece of direct feedback you recently gave to a colleague. How did he or she respond?
So with one of our clients we had moved from a flat fee basis to an hourly basis. I tracked the numbers closely because I wanted to ensure that we weren’t losing money on a case by case basis.
I discovered that an engineer was turning in projects with hours that were not meeting the benchmark set by the flat fee.
I confronted him and let him know that he needs to track more time because we’re losing money. He’s not the confrontational type so he didn’t take this well. He argued with me that there’s only so much work that can go into a project, once it’s done it’s done.
I thought of another way to get my point across. So what I did was I created some formulas on his project spreadsheet. The formula took into account the hours that he tracked, and how much money that would generate. I also had a second column that compared that number to the amount of money we would be getting on a flat fee basis. There would be a huge negative number which I think helped him see for each case how much money we were losing.
I think that really hit home for him because after he saw that he asked told me to make it more simple for him.
So I made a new column that calculated how many hours he should work to meet the benchmark.
What’s the most complex problem you’ve ever worked on?
Patent search work
My boss saw that I had a knack for research and critical thinking and asked me to take on a role as interim patent searcher.
I have to research and accurately describe inventions from a wide range of industries. From
affiliate marketing to yoga garments to augmented reality devices; I have to be adaptable in my ability
to comprehend and describe various devices, methods, and products.
Now this role typically requires some to have a technical background which I do not have so this was definitely a difficult role that made me feel like a fish out of water
The action that I took was to spend a undue amount of time on these search projects but importantly to ask very specific questions of my boss. I would never go to him and say “is this right” because the task involved to much ambiguity for hiim to know if it was right unless he did the job himself, so questions I would ask would be “in these two emodiments would you say that this element and that element are similar” and it taught me to think like a patent searcher. I did this for about six months I really prided myself on working on each patent search until it was clear that no one could deny that I blocked patentability. I also learned quickly that there was a fine balance between blocking patentability as an examiner would and showing that patentability was blocked in a way that an inventor would not distrust and dispute.
Result - inventors never came back questioning the validity of my searches which is huge because it’s happens often that a inventor’s application will be examined at the USPTO and the examiner will come back with prior art that totally blocks patentability
Tell me about a time you took initiative.
Situation In 2012 when I was an intern at Worksystems, I faced a challenge while my boss Reese was in meetings all day. I teacher was upset about one of the trips her class was scheduled to go on.
Task
Since Reese wasn’t the type of boss to micromanage I felt I since of agency in the role so I made decision to take ownership and reply to the teacher since addressing an angry customer is always an urgent matter because not addressing them in a timely fashion can make them more angry.
Action
It was clear to me that she had biases about the company so I shared my personal knowledge about the company with her making sure to CC my boss so he was in the know.
Result
The teacher thanked me and decided to keep the trip. My boss Reese later saw the thread and immediately sent out a message to his boss and said that I was “talented” and that “I handled the communication with poise and insight with no assistance” from him.
Tell me a story about the last time you had to apologize to someone. Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
Situation
When I worked as a logistics intern at worksysystems I over looked some information which would have caused a tour to arrive at
an incorrect site. The site was pretty upset that I overlooked this. Basically a part of my daily workflow was to copy and past information from an internal spreadsheet into emails and send information to the appropriate groups about their upcoming tours.
Action
I apologized and I let the person know that I understand why they were upset and I Reported the problem to my supervisor so he was aware and not left in the dark or caught off guard. And I let him know the steps that I had already taken to resolve the problem. Luckily the problem was caught before the tour started.
Result
From that experience I definitely learned that no matter how much I think I know, it doesn’t hurt to double check. Also I created a portal on a website where teachers could get information which reduced the chance of me inputting incorrect information in the current email everything system we were using. Yes, I’m human and it’s not the end of the world, but I really like the saying Would you rather have a surgeon operating on you who got As in school or Cs in school. To me that means, sure no one is infallible but people expect me to do my job well and I expect the same of them.
