Problem solving skills

What problem solving skills include

The Australian Government's Core Skills for Work Developmental Framework lists "identify and solve problems" as one of ten non-technical skill areas (often called soft skills) that employers and industry identified as important for work. It describes the skill as dealing with routine and non-routine problems to achieve work objectives, and breaks it into three parts: identifying problems, applying a process to solve them, and reviewing the outcome.

In everyday terms, that usually means some combination of the following:

• Spotting a problem early, before it grows or reaches a customer.
• Finding the cause, so you fix what's actually wrong and not only the symptom.
• Weighing up options, including what each one would cost in time, money or disruption.
• Acting on a decision and following it through.
• Checking the result, and adjusting if the fix didn't do what you expected.
• Knowing when to ask for help, because a problem outside your role or experience is often best passed to someone who can deal with it.

That last point is easy to overlook. The framework treats recognising when to seek assistance as part of the skill, not a failure of it, and an employer hiring for an entry-level role will usually want to hear that you know where your responsibility ends.

What problem solving looks like in different jobs

The same skill shows up very differently depending on the work. A few examples:

• Retail or hospitality: a supplier delivery is short on a busy weekend, so you rework the menu or display, tell the team what's changed and log the shortfall for the manager.
• Trades: a circuit keeps tripping and the obvious fix hasn't worked, so you test each part of the system in turn until you find the fault.
• Administration: invoices keep being paid late, so you trace where they stall in the approval chain and suggest a change to who signs off.
• Customer service: a customer's issue doesn't fit any standard answer, so you find out who can resolve it, keep the customer updated and follow up once it's done.
• IT support: several users report the same error, so you look for what they have in common before treating each one as a separate ticket.

The framework also describes the skill at five stages, from novice to expert. Someone new to a role tends to follow set procedures for familiar problems and ask for help with the rest. With more experience, people start looking behind the obvious symptoms to find underlying causes, and eventually anticipate problems before they happen. That's useful when choosing your examples: pitch them at the level the job needs. A graduate role doesn't call for a story about redesigning a whole system, and a senior role needs more than following a checklist.

The framework notes that the skill depends heavily on context, too. A person who solves problems confidently in one organisation may be slower for a while in a new one, until they learn how things work there. If you're starting somewhere new or changing fields, that's expected, and it doesn't mean the skill has gone.

How to show problem solving skills on your resume

A resume is where an employer first looks for evidence. In Jobs and Skills Australia's How employers recruit research, 50% of surveyed employers who had recently recruited said they looked for evidence of relevant experience and skills at the application stage, more than any other quality.

The strongest place for problem solving is in your work history, as a bullet point under the relevant job. Each line can carry three things in a short space: the problem, what you did, and the result. Start with an action verb that says what kind of problem solving it was, such as "traced", "diagnosed", "reorganised" or "negotiated", and finish with the outcome, measured if you can.

These examples show the pattern. Replace the details and figures with your own, and only include a number you could explain if asked.

If your skills section includes problem solving, it often reads better named as the specific version the job uses, such as "fault finding", "troubleshooting" or "root cause analysis", when that matches your work. The skills for your resume guide covers how to choose and word the rest of that section.

How to answer problem solving interview questions

Interviewers usually ask about problem solving as a behavioural question. It might be "Tell me about a time you solved a difficult problem", "Describe a situation where something went wrong and what you did", or "Give an example of when you had to find a solution with limited information."

The STAR method (situation, task, action, result) gives you a simple order to tell the story in. For this question, the action section deserves most of your time, and especially how you worked out the cause and why you chose the fix you did. The result shows the problem was solved, but your reasoning is what tells the interviewer how you'd handle the next one.

Here's how an answer might sound. It runs to roughly a minute when spoken.

If you haven't had much work experience, the same structure works with a problem from study, volunteering, sport or a casual job. A group assignment that fell behind, a club event that lost its venue or a shift where the till system went down can all show how you think, as long as the story is about what you did.

A few things tend to weaken an answer:

• A story where someone else did the thinking. If your manager diagnosed the problem and you carried out the fix, the example shows reliability more than problem solving.
• Blaming colleagues for the problem, even when they caused it. Describe what happened plainly and move on to your response.
• No clear result. If the fix didn't fully work, you can still use the example. Say what you learned and what you'd do differently, because reviewing the outcome is part of the skill.

For more on building a set of stories that cover this and other common questions, see how to prepare for a job interview.

Building your problem solving skills

Most people develop the skill through the problems their work already gives them. It helps to get into the habit of asking why something went wrong before fixing it, and of checking afterwards whether the fix held. Offering to take on a fault, complaint or process that nobody has sorted out yet gives you practice and, often, a resume example.

Some workplaces use a formal technique, such as root cause analysis or a structured incident review. If job ads in your field mention one, it's worth learning how it works, so you can use the method and describe your examples in the terms those employers use.