How Do You Ensure You Don’t Make Mistakes at Work?
One of the trickiest interview questions you may be asked is, “how do you ensure you don’t make mistakes at work?” Unfortunately, many candidates usually misunderstand the question, hence their lack of giving appropriate answers to the interview questions.
Before I start giving you a guide on how to answer the question, it is important I first explain a few of the misconceptions that candidates usually have about it.
When asked “how do you ensure you don’t make mistakes at work?”, some candidates usually think that the interviewer is looking for someone who will not make any mistakes at all when discharging their duties. This is far from the truth. Even, if you are being interviewed as an experienced person for the job you are being interviewed for, that does not guarantee that you won’t make a mistake in the new job if hired. Remember that you will be working in a new company with cultures and values that may be different from where you are coming from. Also, you will be working with new people with different backgrounds and approaches to work. With all these, you can be sure that you will not make any mistakes at work.
Another misconception about “how do you ensure you don’t make mistakes at work?” is that candidates usually think that the interviewers are perfect and that they don’t make mistakes. This is not true. In fact, don’t be surprised that they may even make mistakes during the interview. However, because they are the ones conducting the interview, the mistakes may not be obvious to the job candidates. But if they are to do self-appraisal, they will realize where they made one mistake or the other.
Having known about this misconception, you should not be frightened by the question. There is a saying that no one is perfect. Therefore, if you want to answer the question “how do you ensure you don’t make mistakes at work?” correctly, it is important that you accept your limitations. It is not the time to brag that you don’t and will not make mistakes in your work. In fact, the first mistake you will make is to start impressing the interviewers so that you won’t make a mistake at work.
So, how do you now answer this interview question “how do you ensure you don’t make mistakes at work?”. Below are the tips that will help you come up with reasonable answers.
- Let the interviewers know about your skills and experiences you have which will ensure that you will not make a mistake that will be costly to the organizations
- Talk about the mistakes you have made in the past, how you corrected them, and what you learned from the mistakes. It is important that you don’t mention a mistake that is too weighty. The mistake should be one that didn’t impact the business of the company.
- Keep your explanation short. Too many words may make you say things that you are not supposed to say or that will prompt the interviewer to ask further questions that may reveal things you will not want them to know.
- You need to be honest and accept responsibility for your mistakes. In fact, one of the reasons interviewers ask this question is that they want to know if you are the type that accepts responsibility or you are the type that shift blames. Don’t blame others for your mistakes. When you accept your mistakes, it shows that you are responsible and that you can be easily corrected if necessary, and that you can learn from such mistakes.
- Mistakes are not expected to be repeated. You, therefore, need to convince the interviewer of what you have done and the strategies you have put in place so that such mistakes will not occur in the future.
Some of the things you can mention to convince the interviewers that you won’t make mistakes that will negatively impact the company are:
- Courses you have attended to improve your skills. If you have attended courses or acquired skills related to your job which can enhance your performance, you can mention these.
- Your commitment to excellence: Of course, anyone that is committed to excellence will usually do things in an excellent way.
- Ability to stay focused: While multi-tasking can be a skill, the ability to stay focused on a given task reduces the chance of making a mistake. When one is distracted, he may not be able to attention to the task at hand. Some of the things that usually cause distractions in the workplace include making and answering phone calls, checking and responding to emails, notifications, etc. To overcome such distractions, one can have time dedicated to attending to such things that easily cause distractions.
- Create a checklist: Work can be split into smaller tasks A highlight of such tasks will help you ensure that no important aspect of a work is left unattended do.
- You can let them know that you don’t procrastinate. Tell them that you do your work on time and that you don’t push work till it is approaching the deadlines before you start working on them.
- The need to revise works before submission in order for you to notice errors and review them.
- Peer Review: You can let your peers help you review your works so that they can identify any errors that you may not have noticed.
- Seek help and clarifications from superiors when not cleared on a particular subject matter.
- Take a break: If you work for long hours, there is a tendency for stress and fatigue to set in. In such a time, one can easily lose concentration and then make mistakes. But if you can take a break, your strength will be rejuvenated by the time you return to continue with the work.
If you follow the tips and you ensure that you organize your thoughts very well, you will be able to convince the interviewers that you won’t make a mistake that will be inimical to the success of the company.