8.6 Career Connection

Interview Questions 

Tell me about a time when you had a complex problem to solve and not enough information to make a decision.  What was the situation? What did you do? How did it turn out?

Tell me about a time when you were working with someone else to complete a task and they were not doing their share?  What was the situation? What did you do? How did it turn out?

If you were given a task to do that you had never done before, how would you go about completing the task?

Tell me about a time you had to make a very quick decision about something.  How did you go about deciding and what did you learn from that experience?

Complex Problem Solving – the 7 Job Skills for the Future in Action

Determining the best approach to any given problem and generating more than one possible solution to the problem constitutes the complicated process of problem-solving. However, you often use all of the 7 Job Skills for the Future when apply this skill to the workplace.

People who are good at these skills are highly marketable because many jobs consist of a series of problems that need to be solved for production, services, goods, and sales to continue smoothly.

Think about what happens when a worker at your favourite coffee shop slips on a wet spot behind the counter, dropping several drinks she just prepared. One problem is the employee may be hurt, in need of attention, and probably embarrassed; another problem is that several customers do not have the drinks they were waiting for; and another problem is that stopping production of drinks (to care for the hurt worker, to clean up her spilled drinks, to make new drinks) causes the line at the cash register to back up.

A good manager has to juggle all of these elements to resolve the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. That resolution and return to standard operations doesn’t happen without a great deal of thinking: prioritizing needs, shifting other workers off one station onto another temporarily, and dealing with all the people involved, from the injured worker to the impatient patrons.

What sort of thinking do you imagine initially helped in the following scenarios? How would the other types of thinking come into resolving these problems?

1. Mission Control reacting to the Apollo 13 emergency
   1. Analytical thinking
   2. Creative thinking
   3. Critical thinking
2. Automakers coordinating the switch from fuel-based to electric cars
   1. Analytical thinking
   2. Creative thinking
   3. Critical thinking
3. The construction of the New York subway system
   1. Analytical thinking
   2. Creative thinking
   3. Critical thinking