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What valuable skill or quality does this show?

by brador 9y ago

perl4ever 9y ago
1. How are you at dealing with stress? 2. How are you at dealing with the instinctual desire to hide your mistakes, and instead immediately take steps to remediate them?
squegles 9y ago
Honesty and the ability to own up to your mistakes. It can also show arrogance depending on their response.
- MiscIdeaMaker99 9y ago
  I always ask potential coworkers during an interview for a story like that for two reasons: 1) it'll tell me whether or not they have humility, honesty, etc; 2) and, because I love sharing war stories. One candidate we interviewed answered my question saying that he had never made a mistake like that. Then he went on to tell me a story about how a bad patch from Oracle which he applied brought down production this one time. The guy seemed arrogant, and I felt like he was lying or he is overstating his skills. Either way, he ended up getting hired by another team (knowing full well that we didn't like him), and he only stayed for about a month or two. Go figure.
puzzle 9y ago
In addition to what others have said about honesty and ownership of mistakes, it shows you how much they're capable of learning from the inevitable mistakes. Even more importantly, if they haven't made any major mistakes yet, there's a good chance they'll make it once you hire them, because they haven't been through the whole experience and have no scars to show for it. Or maybe they haven't had yet a job where they were responsible for anything that could result in a major incident. There's no lesson in paranoia as great as wiping the wrong storage array, shutting down services in an order other than the sanctioned one, etc.
zer00eyz 9y ago
I am looking for a few things: Did you own the mistake. (responsibility) What steps did you take to resolve it. (accountablity and ownership) Are you able to laugh about it, or did you learn something from it. I would hope that you can make claim to one or the other. (personality) Can you tell a story. Because the story is personal, it is topic where you have "mastery" and should demonstrate how you communicate. (communication) An understanding of your professional background - most of these stories have other "players" in them that help move them along and tell me who you have/had to interact with in the past. (experience) Remember I give my own example that not only hits these points but probably illicit a laugh our two out of the candidate, and remind them that I am not any different from them. I tend to be able to have more conversational interviews after this question, and get better responses and answers from candidates.

What valuable skill or quality does this show?

by brador 9y ago

What valuable skill or quality does this show?

1. How are you at dealing with stress? 2. How are you at dealing with the instinctual desire to hide your mistakes, and instead immediately take steps to remediate them?

squegles 9y ago

Honesty and the ability to own up to your mistakes. It can also show arrogance depending on their response.

MiscIdeaMaker99 9y ago
I always ask potential coworkers during an interview for a story like that for two reasons: 1) it'll tell me whether or not they have humility, honesty, etc; 2) and, because I love sharing war stories. One candidate we interviewed answered my question saying that he had never made a mistake like that. Then he went on to tell me a story about how a bad patch from Oracle which he applied brought down production this one time. The guy seemed arrogant, and I felt like he was lying or he is overstating his skills. Either way, he ended up getting hired by another team (knowing full well that we didn't like him), and he only stayed for about a month or two. Go figure.

puzzle 9y ago

In addition to what others have said about honesty and ownership of mistakes, it shows you how much they're capable of learning from the inevitable mistakes. Even more importantly, if they haven't made any major mistakes yet, there's a good chance they'll make it once you hire them, because they haven't been through the whole experience and have no scars to show for it. Or maybe they haven't had yet a job where they were responsible for anything that could result in a major incident. There's no lesson in paranoia as great as wiping the wrong storage array, shutting down services in an order other than the sanctioned one, etc.

zer00eyz 9y ago

I am looking for a few things: Did you own the mistake. (responsibility) What steps did you take to resolve it. (accountablity and ownership) Are you able to laugh about it, or did you learn something from it. I would hope that you can make claim to one or the other. (personality) Can you tell a story. Because the story is personal, it is topic where you have "mastery" and should demonstrate how you communicate. (communication) An understanding of your professional background - most of these stories have other "players" in them that help move them along and tell me who you have/had to interact with in the past. (experience) Remember I give my own example that not only hits these points but probably illicit a laugh our two out of the candidate, and remind them that I am not any different from them. I tend to be able to have more conversational interviews after this question, and get better responses and answers from candidates.