Interview questions › Spotting and solving problems
Tell me about a time you found a quality problem in your own work or your team's work. What did you do?
Spotting and solving problems · commonly asked in most interviews
No account, no credit card for the first three questions.
How to answer it well
Say how you found it, what you told people and when, and the check you added so the same defect cannot pass again.
Two mistakes that cost you points
- Quietly fixing it and telling nobody.
- Blaming the person who made the mistake rather than the process that let it through.
What to do with this question today
- Answer it out loud once, without stopping. Do not write it down first.
- Read back exactly what you said. Mark the filler words, and the length of your longest pause.
- Answer it again and change one thing — usually the opening line, or the number at the end.
This question is not in the free run yet — practise the same skill with a free run, or paste a job description and we build the set around that role.
More questions
- Tell me about a time you spotted a problem other people had missed, and came up with a fix. · Spotting and solving problems
- Tell me about a time you had to find the real cause of a recurring problem, not just the symptom. · Spotting and solving problems
- Tell me about a decision you made using data. What did you measure, and what did it change? · Spotting and solving problems
- Tell me about a difficult customer or client situation and how you resolved it. · Spotting and solving problems
- In one minute, introduce yourself and explain why this role should consider you. · Communication
- Walk me through your resume. Tell me about the choices you made along the way. · Communication
Also searched as: tell me about a time you made an error at work; quality control interview answer
Dimension: Spotting and solving problems — the same skill is probed again with different wording, so practise the pattern, not just this sentence.