Can you describe an incident where you missed an error in code and discuss what happened?

How to Answer
Answer Example

Nobody is perfect, even quality assurance engineers. The Palo Alto Networks interviewer knows this and will ask a question like this to ensure that you recognize your imperfections, but more importantly, take actions to correct them. This is a behavioral question, so you can use the STAR format for your response. Describe the Situation, discuss the Task you needed to accomplish, talk about the Actions you took, and then provide the interviewer with a brief description of the Results you achieved.

"During my career, there have only been a small number of instances in which a bug slipped through my quality control process. The most recent one involved a database call. The command was supposed to result in a list of customers over 30 days behind their payments. However, instead of using 30, the programmer entered a value of 3. This was discovered during the test since the dataset I used was small. However, when the program went into production, it resulted in a much larger list of overdue invoices. Once the bug was discovered, we immediately corrected it. What I learned from this and can apply to my work here at Palo Alto Networks was to pay special attention to the values used in specific calls and to increase the size of the data set during quality assurance testing."

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How to Answer: Can you describe an incident where you missed an error in code and discuss what happened?

Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Palo Alto Networks job interview.

3. Can you describe an incident where you missed an error in code and discuss what happened?

How to Answer

Nobody is perfect, even quality assurance engineers. The Palo Alto Networks interviewer knows this and will ask a question like this to ensure that you recognize your imperfections, but more importantly, take actions to correct them. This is a behavioral question, so you can use the STAR format for your response. Describe the Situation, discuss the Task you needed to accomplish, talk about the Actions you took, and then provide the interviewer with a brief description of the Results you achieved.

Answer Example

"During my career, there have only been a small number of instances in which a bug slipped through my quality control process. The most recent one involved a database call. The command was supposed to result in a list of customers over 30 days behind their payments. However, instead of using 30, the programmer entered a value of 3. This was discovered during the test since the dataset I used was small. However, when the program went into production, it resulted in a much larger list of overdue invoices. Once the bug was discovered, we immediately corrected it. What I learned from this and can apply to my work here at Palo Alto Networks was to pay special attention to the values used in specific calls and to increase the size of the data set during quality assurance testing."

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