During your career as a technical support engineer, what are some of your mistakes, and what did you learn from them?

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Answer Example

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 in the future. 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.

"Unfortunately, during my career, I've made many mistakes. However, I make sure that I learned from these and try not to repeat them. An example of this occurred early in my career when I was required to assist a user with an unfamiliar problem. 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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How to Answer: During your career as a technical support engineer, what are some of your mistakes, and what did you learn from them?

Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Technical Support Engineer job interview.

4. During your career as a technical support engineer, what are some of your mistakes, and what did you learn from them?

How to Answer

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 in the future. 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.

Written by William Swansen on September 6th, 2021

Answer Example

"Unfortunately, during my career, I've made many mistakes. However, I make sure that I learned from these and try not to repeat them. An example of this occurred early in my career when I was required to assist a user with an unfamiliar problem. 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."

Written by William Swansen on September 6th, 2021

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