This varies tremendously based on your field of work and position. I work in engineering. There are many issues that need to be understood quickly. For example, maybe a team member asks your assistance and they are hoping for you to solve/assist with their problem immediately, rather than taking days. Maybe people want to discuss a high priority issue in a meeting later that day. Maybe a customer is actively testing the product and a slow support/resolution would cost business. Maybe the product went offline with thousands of end users impacted, and you are remotely trying to find a solution, with each minute of downtime without a solution is costly. There are many situations were persons request regular updates about progress towards a solution each x minutes or hours, rather than days or weeks. In the vast majority of situations, time to complete work is important, even when days or weeks is expected.
That said, in my experience, engineering work has little resemblance to college tests. College tests are generally designed to have a straightforward solution that is largely independent from previous work, and independent from other students. Real life problems are rarely designed to have a straightforward solution. There may very well be no good solution at all. Real life problems are usually heavily dependent on past work and usually involve interaction with a variety of team members. It’s more like a huge multi-year group project than a college exam. As such, it’s relatively common for a student who does well on engineering tests to not do as well in a work environment, as is for students who do not do as well on tests to perform well in a work environment. This relates to why engineering (and most other field) employers tend to emphasize relevant experience in a work environment and skill sets, rather than college GPA.