Tell me about a time you went above and beyond.

Last summer I was a finance intern at a regional furniture retailer with 40 stores. My assignment was narrow. Every Monday I updated the weekly sales report and sent it to the store managers. In my third week I noticed that delivery refunds looked high at some stores. Nobody had asked me to look at refunds, and I could have just sent the report. I decided to find out why. I told my manager first, and she agreed as long as the report still went out on time. I stayed late for two weeks and went through the refund records. Most of them were for late deliveries, and those stores all used the same delivery contractor. I wrote up what I found and shared it with the operations manager. He moved some of the stores to a second contractor. By the end of my internship, refunds at those stores had come down a lot. What I took from it is that going beyond the job only counts if the job itself still gets done.

Last summer I was a finance intern at a regional furniture retailer with 40 stores. My assignment was narrow. Every Monday I updated the weekly sales report and sent it to the store managers. In my third week I noticed that delivery refunds looked high at six stores, about three times the rate of the others. Nobody had asked me to look at refunds, and I could have just sent the report. I decided to find out why, because refunds sat between finance and operations and neither team owned them. I told my manager first, and she agreed as long as the report still went out on time. I stayed late for two weeks and went through 1,200 refund records by hand. Most of them were for late deliveries, and those stores all used the same delivery contractor, which was missing its delivery window on about one order in five. I wrote up what I found on one page and asked the operations manager for 15 minutes. I'd expected him to be defensive, so I brought the order numbers and no opinion about the contractor. He moved four of the six stores to a second contractor as a test. By the end of my internship, late-delivery refunds at those four stores had fallen from about $18,000 a month to about $7,000. The finance director added the refund breakdown to the weekly report, and I wrote down the steps so the next intern could run it. What I took from it is that going beyond the job only counts if the job itself still gets done and someone can act on what you found.