Interview Help

Ritchmeister

I have an interview today and I am likely to be asked the following question.

"Have you ever had to solve a technical problem?"

Now I would normally just talk about a fault with my pc for this however I am also likely to be asked a seperate question on "What would you do if you recieved a computer that wasn't working?". Now for this question I was going to say something along the lines of test every indivual part to try and isolate the problem, but this kind of leaves me with no answer for the first question. Any ideas on something else I could say?

Aldo

What kind of job are you applying for? Will repairing computers be part of your job description? If it is you should outline how you would go about this. I think the part before isolating the problem is asking whoever brought it in to describe how it isn't working and what they were doing at that time?

Ritchmeister

Its for an Oil and Gas apprenticeship working out on the oil rigs so not specifically dealing with like broken desptop computers. And I like that idea about just gaining as much information as possible about what how it broke, I had been treating the question as though it was a brand new computer.

Really though I can't think of any other type of technical problems that I could have solved. Apparantly one person who took it outlined the time a forklift truk broke down at work and how they went around fixing it but i don't have any experience in anything like that.

Aldo

I guess they just want to see how technical-minded you are. You never fixed anything on your car per chance?

Ritchmeister

Hmm, no car, but perhaps I could make something up around that type of scenario. I know I really shouldn't lie and I could possibly get caught out, but it's a rather important job for me to get so I'm pretty desperate and theres at least 400 people for 60 places.

Dunadan019

don't lie.

I don't see why you can't use the computer for both questions unless your computer has only broken once....

MichaelLC

Both answers should highlight the type of personality they are likely to want.

I'd guess 'friendly customer service' is a low demand on a rig, but would think safety conscious, quick thinking, technically minded would be desirable. So along the lines of 'examined the problem, diagnosed it and made a repair' would be good.