Describe a time you received feedback you disagreed with.

In an internship, my mentor told me I wasn't being proactive enough about asking for help. I disagreed at first because I felt I was trying hard to solve things on my own and not interrupt people unnecessarily. Instead of debating it, I asked for examples, and he pointed out that I would stay stuck for too long before mentioning a blocker, which made it harder for him to help me course-correct. Once I understood that, I started using a simple rule for myself: if I was blocked for more than a couple of hours, I would send a quick note with what I had tried and where I was stuck. A few weeks later he told me my updates were much easier to support because he had context earlier. What I took from that is that independence is good, but waiting too long to surface a problem can look less proactive, not more.

During a part-time support role at a small e-commerce company, my supervisor said I needed to be more direct with customers when I thought a request was unreasonable. I disagreed because I had been trained to keep every conversation as friendly as possible, and I worried that being too blunt would make people upset. I asked her to show me a few examples, and she explained that I was sometimes saying “I’ll see what I can do” when the answer was actually no, which led to extra back-and-forth and frustrated customers. I started rewriting my responses to be clearer but still polite, like explaining what we could offer instead of leaving things open-ended. After that, the same issues came up less often, and I realized that being kind and being clear are not opposites. That feedback changed how I think about good service: it’s not just about sounding nice, it’s about helping people understand what to expect.