Give me an example of a time you proposed a novel approach to a problem.
Asked at:
Capital One
Amazon
Coinbase
Meta
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What is this question about
Interviewers use this question to understand how you think when the obvious path is not enough. They want to see whether your "novel approach" was actually grounded in a real problem, thoughtful judgment, and credible execution rather than novelty for its own sake. At higher levels, they are also testing whether you can introduce new ways of working that others can trust, adopt, and benefit from.
“Tell me about a time you came up with a non-obvious solution to a tough problem.”
“Describe a situation where the standard approach wasn't working and you tried something different.”
“Have you ever introduced a new way of solving a problem that others weren't initially considering?”
“What's an example of a time you looked at a problem differently from the rest of the team and proposed another path?”
Key Insights
- You do not get extra credit just for doing something unusual. Show why the standard approach was insufficient, what risks your idea introduced, and how you validated it before betting too much on it.
- Many candidates describe the idea but skip the reasoning. Make your answer explain the chain from problem understanding to hypothesis to experiment to outcome, so the interviewer can judge your judgment, not just your creativity.
- Novelty at your level should match your scope. A junior candidate can improve a small workflow or debugging method; a staff or manager candidate should usually be changing how multiple people or teams solve a class of problems.
What interviewers probe atlevel
Top Priority
A good junior answer shows that you did more than suggest an idea—you helped make it real and checked whether it actually helped.
Good examples
🟢I volunteered to implement the first version, documented how to use it, and asked teammates afterward whether it made their work easier.
🟢I owned the small rollout end to end, fixed the issues people hit, and compared the before-and-after effort on the task it was meant to improve.
Bad examples
🔴I suggested the approach in a meeting and then waited for my lead to decide if we wanted to use it.
🔴I built a first version, handed it over, and assumed it was successful because people seemed positive about it.
Weak answers stop at proposing; strong answers include delivery, support, and evidence of impact.
At junior level, the bar is not inventing something huge; it is noticing a real pain point and proposing a better way that actually mattered to your work.
Good examples
🟢We were spending a lot of time manually checking failed test runs, so I proposed grouping failures by likely cause to cut the investigation time for each change.
🟢A recurring bug was hard to reproduce locally, so I suggested adding lightweight debug snapshots in one narrow area because the team was losing hours on each incident.
Bad examples
🔴I made a script to rename files automatically because I like automating things, and it was pretty cool to build even though we only used it once.
🔴I suggested using a new library mostly because it looked cleaner than what we had, and we switched before really discussing whether the old approach was causing problems.
Weak answers make the idea sound interesting to the candidate; strong answers make the problem important to the team.
Valuable
A strong junior story shows confidence in an idea without acting like your new approach was obviously right from the start.
Good examples
🟢I brought the idea to my mentor, listened to the concerns about complexity, and adjusted the first version to keep it simpler.
🟢I suggested the new method, asked a teammate to pressure-test it, and changed part of the plan based on what they pointed out.
Bad examples
🔴I pushed hard because I knew my approach was better than the one the team was using, and eventually they let me do it.
🔴I mainly wanted to prove the usual way was outdated, so I did the work myself rather than getting much input.
Weak answers make novelty adversarial; strong answers make it collaborative and teachable.
Example answers atlevel
Great answers
In my last internship, our team kept losing time reproducing a flaky test failure because the logs were long and inconsistent. I suggested adding a small script that grouped the failures into a few common patterns and highlighted the first likely cause, instead of reading the full output every time. Before asking the team to use it, I tried it on ten recent failures and compared how long it took me to identify the issue with and without the script. The script was simple, but it cut my investigation time by about half, so my mentor encouraged me to clean it up and share it with the team. I documented how to run it and updated it after two teammates found cases I had missed. It wasn't a huge project, but it turned a repeated annoyance into something faster and more reliable for the group.
At a small nonprofit where I was the only junior engineer, new volunteers kept getting stuck during signup because our app assumed familiarity with a few uncommon terms. I suggested adding lightweight, in-app tooltips that appeared only for first-time users and could be edited via a simple JSON file so non-developers on the team could update copy. I built a quick prototype using our existing UI components and tested it with three volunteers, then measured task completion and time to first action — onboarding completion rose by about 30% and confusion dropped noticeably in follow-up interviews. The maintainable, low-effort solution let the program manager tune messaging without a code change, so I documented the process and handed it off for them to own.
Poor answers
One time I proposed that we use a new testing tool because the current one felt old and the new one had a nicer interface. I set it up on my branch and showed everyone that it worked, and people thought it was interesting. We didn't fully switch over right away, but I think it was a good example of me bringing fresh ideas. I like finding newer ways to do things instead of sticking with the default.
Question Timeline
See when this question was last asked and where, including any notes left by other candidates.
Mid March, 2026
Amazon
Mid-level
Early June, 2025
Meta
Mid-level
Late April, 2025
Amazon
Senior
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