📗 Tell Me About a Time When You Failed? (Part 1)
Alternative Questions:
🔹What was your biggest mistake and what did you learn from it?
🔹Tell me about a decision that you regret.
🔹Tell Me About a Time When You Failed. What did you learn from it?
🔹What’s your greatest professional failure? How did you make a change/changes to correct your mistake?
This is one of the most common and also a tough situational based interview questions. The interviewer doesn't ask this question because they want to expose your flaws or get a reason to reject you. One reason behind this question is that they may be looking for someone who can bounce back from failure. They don’t expect you to be perfect because they know that everybody fails. They also want to know, Are you self-aware enough to acknowledge failure and weakness?
Sometimes, your interviewer makes you easier by adding more hints.
Like, "What did you learn from it?" or "How did you make a change/changes to correct your mistake." or "How did you deal with this experience?" or "How do you view success, failure, and risk in general?"
It is always suitable to include what you learned and how you recovered from your failure, even if an interviewer does not give you any hints.
Be careful, that your recruiter wants to hear positive results from your failure. Use the STAR method Situation/Task, Approach and Results to prepare your story. Instead of aiming for perfection by saying that you’ve never made a mistake, focus on how you can turn a negative into a positive.
The right answer to this question can help you grab the job offer. So this question might be another biggest opportunity for you.
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” — Bill Gates
🔘Points to remember before you answer this question.
🔹Always stay calm.
🔹Don't be offended.
🔹Take a deep breath and think about that for a second.
🔹Don't rush to answer this question. 🔹Never skip or hesitate to answer this question.
🔹Show your honesty.
🔹Do not tell that you have never failed. Nobody is perfect. Everyone fails at least once in their life.
🔹Do not tell about the failure that made a huge loss to your organization or was a reason for your dismissal.
The story is the most important part of answering this question. Backup your failure as a story and also include what you learned from your possible failure.
If you think you are perfect and do not admit mistakes then it shows that you have no self-awareness or ability to grow.
🔹Show them that you take responsibility for your mistake instead of blaming others.
Make sure that you were serious in that situation.
⛔️Mistakes to Avoid
🔸Don't include more than one failure in your answer.
🔸Don't make your answer longer and make them boring to hear from you. Remember to be concise and brief!
🔸Don't show your darkest or deepest secrets.
🔸Don't say that you learned nothing from the experience.
Everyone fails once in their life, so don’t hide it or act like you have no failures.
🔸Another biggest mistake a candidate does is, they sound like the mistake happened due to their carelessness. Avoid this.
🔸Make sure, the failure you admitted didn't happen repeatedly in your work.
🔸Don’t blame coworkers, managers, or your clients.
🔸Don't say something like. "I only made sales by 25%, but I wanted to do more, so I felt like a failure." This shows that you are trying to boast about yourself.
🔸Don't scare your employer, by admitting the biggest mistake that cost your previous organization thousands of dollars.
🔸Don’t forget to practice.
🔘How to use STAR System to prepare your answer?
Situation/Task (ST): Start with a backstory and provide an overview of the situation. Keep it simple and concise. Like, "In my first month as an account manager, I wanted to impress a top client and over-promised on a project timeline. Unfortunately, the team didn’t have the resources to deliver by the deadline I’d promised, and we ended up losing the client."
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