About Tracey Drake Expertise If you need timely answers to any question relating to your career search, I can assist you. My areas of expertise include federal resume writing (including all federal resume formats, KSA, SES, ECQ, and Resumix format for Army, Air Force and Navy) as well as job preparation, interview questions, and issues that affect career change and military to civililan conversion resumes
Experience I have worked within the career services industry for many years. My company, DLCS, operates GradResumes.com, Career-Launch.com, and Federal-Resume-Writers.com, and to date we have assisted more than 10,000 job seekers with their resume and interview preparation needs.
Publications Invited expert at CollegeRecruiter.com (resume advice, college admission advice, and careers advice)
Certified platinum Expert Author at ezinearticles.com (Resume Writing and Career Advice)
Paid resident expert writer at Suite101.com on the topic of Hiring Opportunities in the Careers/Employment section.
Education/Credentials BA in English
MBA in Marketing
Question The person in this position (parks maintenance worker) needs to be innovative and proactive. Please describe an activity or action you have taken to demonstrate these qualities in solving this problem?
Answer Good morning - With this type of question, they are looking for your ability to solve problems in a creative manner. They are also gauging your ability to work independently and your ability to contibute to a work team. You need to describe a problem that occured in your last (or current job) that you took the initiative to fix or make the work process better.
For example, you might say something like:
When I joined ABC Landscaping in 2001, many of the duties being performed in the city made poor use of time and the crew sometimes went back to the same contract location two or three times during the same week, when it appeared the work could have been performed on one day. I convinced my boss to let me develop a workflow calendar which would save time in completing jobs, decrease gas consumption on Company vehicles; therefore saving the company time and money.
This type of example can work on many levels. Depending upon the jobs you have held in the past, this question can also be answered using other examples that are less impactful on the company overall. You might have seen a problem at a site where rain was not draining properly and was causing large puddles of water to accumulate in the childrens play area; so you proposed that a series of small drain pipes were buried that carried the water to the end of the play area and drained into the grassy fields. Or perhaps you introduced a landscape team to a new tool that would be easier on the body and the company bought a few because they were more ergonomically friendly.
Essentially, you need to think about your past jobs (and even your education if you accomplished something proactively in college) and make a list of your duties. Once you start writing things down, examples will present themselves that you have not have considered.
Just remember for a KSA it is important to use action words and take a proactive approach in your writing, using as many specific examples as possible.
