Master 30 Technical Support Engineer interview questions covering firewall troubleshooting, network security, and customer escalation scenarios.
Question 22 of 30
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William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
Everyone makes mistakes in their career. Successful people learn from their mistakes and turn failures into lessons. An interviewer will ask this question to test your honesty and see if you are willing to admit to having made mistakes. They are interested to see if you can turn a negative situation into a positive one and thereby increase your ability to do your job going forward. In anticipation of this question, you should have several brief stories prepared which demonstrate your ability to learn from your mistakes and the benefit this provides to an employer.

William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
"Unfortunately, during my career, I've made many mistakes. However, I make sure I learn from these so I would not repeat them here at Palo Alto Networks. An example of this occurred early in my career when I was required to assist a user with a problem I was unfamiliar with. Rather than acknowledge this and seek assistance or research the issue, I plowed ahead and tried to guess at the answer. This not only exasperated the situation, making the problem worse and frustrating the user, but it resulted in me having to seek assistance anyway. What I learned from this is that when I encounter a situation I'm not familiar with, I immediately acknowledge this, seek help, and document the solution to the problem so I will be able to resolve it myself next time."
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Written by William Swansen
30 Questions & Answers • Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

By William

By William