Star Questions Flashcards
Tell me about a situation where your work was criticized.
- First started in my current position
- Made our texas branch unhappy by skipping procedure and just doing work (from ignorance)
- Listened, took accountability, apologized, and took note of the proper way.
- Never came up again, and no further problems.
Tell me about the most boring job you’ve ever had.
I was working in hardware support during a lull. I kept myself busy by asking for work, and when no work was available, working on my ITIL certification.
Tell me about a time when you had to deal with conflict on the job.
I was talking with a group of co-workers, and I wound up correcting a co-worker about something he’d said. He was insulted by this, and became very quiet and obviously irritated. Afterwards, I apologized, as I didn’t mean anything negative, and we moved past it.
What are some of your leadership experiences?
- Web development project
- No skill overlap, one person good at back-end, one person not good with code at all.
- Developed a plan for design and development, and made sure everyone found useful work.
- Project was given a perfect score.
Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done.
- Office had a downed workstation for three weeks, no resolution
- Needed to get the workstation and client back up and working, despite not being our responsibility.
- Gave office my direct line, hunted down the groups who could fix, gave updates several times a day, and followed-up
- Issue was fixed and everything was alright.
Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to prioritize your tasks.
- Capstone project
- Nearly out of time due to technology change
- Worked with the client to identify the most important elements, and worked with our team to identify which of them could be handled in the least amount of time by each member.
- We weren’t able to finish everything we wanted to do, but we were able to deliver a website that did what the client needed in the time required.
Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.
- First time in support at State Farm, and we were being hammered.
- Phone would ring immediately after putting it down, 7:45 - 4:15, in addition to a queue of tickets.
- Went for small walks, ate well, worked out after work and kept myself healthy.
- Made it through, things calmed down, didn’t have psychotic break.
Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete.
- Integrated Auto rollout had a new tool that involved many more steps to use than the normal one
- The existing document was terrible; full-screen screenshots with nothing to show what was happening, poor instructions
- Re-did the entire document with cropped screenshots showing what was happening, examples, hyperlinks, and step-by-step instructions for all aspects.
- Still use the document to this day when I forget how to use the tool.
Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker.
- Happened last week, agent was upset that a quote he was getting wasn’t accurate compared to underwriting
- Spoke with agent and sympathized, but also explained why the method he was using to quote wasn’t going to be accurate.
- Agent was still frustrated, but understood the issue, and resolved to use the proper method of quoting.
Give me an example of a time when you used your fact-finding skills to solve a problem.
- New OkiData Printers, getting errors that no one understood
- Our techs had zero experience with the printers, and the materials created for troubleshooting were incomplete
- Did research online, coupled with attempting fixes on our test model, was able to successfully diagnose issues with LEDs, and found fixes on forums online.
- Was able to resolve the issue.
Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
- Integrated Auto rollout
- My subject area’s primary task, deletes, weren’t being handled by our group, but instead by 3rd level
- No one was attempting to get the task handled by our team again, and Texas is around the corner. Texas generates 45% of those tickets, compared to Indiana’s 1.5%.
- 3rd Level isn’t equipped for the ticket volume.
- Informed management of this issue, and we’ve developed a plan for returning resolution to 2nd level.
Why should we hire you?
- Half-decade explaining a wide variety of technical systems to people from a full range of technical backgrounds.
- I already have a solid base of understanding for the issues that technology can bring to academia. I’ve supported my wife and sister-in-law’s classrooms.
- Extended experience with business and technical writing, from documenting support procedures and training to composing alerts and briefings.
- Talent for finding areas of repetition and creating tools or methods to reduce their impact.
Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
Developed a tool using a bit of JS and HTML that allowed us to automate most of a time-consuming task that made up nearly 20% of our workload.
Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
- Working on delete jobs
- Accidentally deleted an application that couldn’t be deleted for legal reasons.
- Got hold of my team lead and found out what to do, owned up to it, and got it fixed.
Tell me how you handled a difficult situation.
- Office with workstation/BP that’d been down for three weeks. The agent was furious; multiple tickets had been submitted, and they’d been closed without any sort of resolution.
- Gave the agent and user my direct line, and researched the issue and who could troubleshoot it, despite not being able to fix it myself.
- I worked as the point-of-contact with the office, following up daily, until they were actually happy.
