Tell me about a time when you received constructive feedback and how you responded to it

In my first few months as an engineer, my mentor gave me feedback that I was waiting too long before asking for help when I got stuck. I thought I was being independent, but when we looked at a recent task together, it was clear I'd spent almost a full day chasing the wrong issue instead of surfacing what I had tried and where I was blocked. After that, I made a rule for myself that if I was stuck for about thirty minutes without a clear next step, I would write down what I'd tested and ask for help with that context. I also started breaking my changes into smaller pieces so it was easier to get quick feedback earlier. Over the next few tasks, I was getting unstuck faster, and my mentor specifically told me my questions had become much more focused and easier to help with. The main thing I learned was that asking for help early is not a lack of ownership if you do the prep work first.

At my last internship, I built a small internal dashboard for the operations team, and my manager told me the first version was too focused on what I thought was interesting rather than what would actually help people use it quickly. That stung a little, but it was fair, because I had added extra charts and filters before I had really checked what the team needed day to day. I responded by sitting down with two of the people who would use it, asking what questions they were trying to answer most often, and then simplifying the dashboard around those tasks. I also started sending shorter updates earlier so they could react before I spent too much time polishing the wrong thing. By the time we shared the next version, they said it was much easier to read, and my manager pointed out that I was now thinking more about the user than the feature itself. It taught me that good feedback is not just about code quality, but about whether the work is solving the right problem.