The Best Answer For “Tell Me About a Time You Failed”
A step-by-step guide to sharing your story.
One of the most commonly asked questions in any job interview is the dreaded “Tell me about a time you failed” question. The “failure question” is very important to prepare for. You should have an answer ready and be well aware of why the interviewer is asking the question in the first place.
How you answer this question can greatly impact the interviewer's perception of you as a candidate. It can endear you or make it so that the interviewer is sure they don’t want to hire you. You don’t want to appear uncomfortable or unwilling to address the question fully.
In this article, we’ll outline why this question is so important, what the interviewer really wants to know, how to answer the question concisely and memorably, and a few common pitfalls to avoid.
Why Failure Matters in the Workplace
Failure is, unfortunately, an inevitable part of any job. It’s very likely that when you consider failures in your personal or professional life, a few possibilities come to mind. While unpleasant when it’s happening, and sometimes uncomfortable to talk about, it can be beneficial in a few key ways. Here are a few reasons why failure matters in the workplace and why an interviewer will ask you about it:
- Your reaction to failure demonstrates adaptability and an ability to grow: When you fail at a task at work, it demonstrates that as an employee, you’re willing to take risks and try out new things. This is often a quality that employers highly value. It may indicate that you have an adaptable and forward-thinking mindset.
- It provides valuable learning opportunities: Failure can be an opportunity to learn and grow, and it can help you develop new skills and strategies that can be applied in future projects.
- Failure builds resilience in the workplace: When you fail, you also learn what it takes to recover from that failure and succeed the next time around. This resilience is an important quality in any workplace. It can certainly help you overcome challenges and achieve success over time.
- Failure demonstrates self-awareness: When you acknowledge a failure and show that you’ve learned from it, you’re indicating that you are self-aware and capable of reflection. This is a quality that is often highly valued by hiring managers. No one wants to hire someone who can’t take responsibility for their actions or is unwilling to admit that they failed.
Types of Failures to Talk About
When you’re asked the failure question in a job interview or professional setting, it's important to choose a sample answer that not only demonstrates your ability to learn and grow but also highlights your current skills and experiences. Here are a few possibilities:
Personal Failures
While it might seem difficult to talk about at first, sharing a personal failure is a good option when asked the failure question in an interview. By opening up in this specific way, the interviewer will know that you’re fully committed to working for the job.
A good example of a personal failure is flunking a class or getting a surprisingly bad grade on an assignment you were proud of. Unexpected failure like this, and your reaction to it, is a key indicator of what kind of employee you’re going to be. The interview wants to hear about your reaction to this failure and how you improved the next time you took the class or did an assignment.
Professional failures
Professional failures are the common way people tend to answer the failure question in an interview. When considering the story you’re going to tell, you might want to look back on times you’ve mismanaged your time or not solved the problem you’d been asked to resolve.
Perhaps there was a time in another job when you misunderstood a manager’s request or failed to complete it in a timely manner. Knowing what you did wrong, why it was wrong, and what you should do in the future is incredibly important.
Ensure you tell the interviewer what you did the next time you were asked for help or given a task. It should be clear that you’ve learned from your failure and aren’t going to repeat it.
How To Tell a Good Failure Story
Crafting a compelling failure story is the best way to successfully answer the failure question in an interview. It can be a powerful way to showcase your determination and ability to grow. Here is the best way to do this successfully:
The first thing you should do is define what failure means to you. It means different things to different people (likely to the interviewer as well). This will help you frame your story in a way that makes sense and helps the interviewer understand why you chose this specific time in your life.
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It will also ensure that the story feels relevant to the behavioral interview question. You don’t want to dive into a story that, to the interviewer, seems long-winded and outside the scope of the question.
The next thing to do is explain the failure quickly and in simple language. Avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details or using language that’s over the top or too emotional. Make sure to focus on the key factors that led to the failure. Were you overwhelmed at work? Or too busy with your personal life? Make sure to answer the question, “Why did you fail?” This will indicate to the interviewer that you completely understand your mistake.
Next, you should highlight what you learned due to the failure. After you learned that you did something wrong, what was your reaction? Showing that you learned something from the failure is the most important part of the interview question. It’s your answer to this portion that demonstrates your ability to learn and grow from the challenges you’ve faced in the past.
The next step is to tell your interviewer how the failure was resolved. How did you admit to your failure, or how did you fix the issue? What was the final result? Speaking about this part of the experience shows that you can take action and make changes in response to challenges rather than simply giving up and walking away.
The final step is to summarize how you've changed because of the failure. Even if the failure wasn’t entirely life-altering, it likely changed your outlook on your personal or professional life. Perhaps it made you conscious of the time you spend with friends, demonstrated that you need to spend more time studying, etc.
Make sure that you clearly understand how you’ve grown and evolved due to the failure.
Most Common Mistakes Made When Answering the Failure Question
There are, unfortunately, a few very common mistakes that people make when answering the failure question. Ensuring you know what these are and how to avoid them will make your next job interview all the easier (and less nerve-racking!).
The first mistake people tend to make when answering this question is spending too long on the story. Sometimes being nervous in interviews, especially about a question like this, can make it easy to ramble or go into too much detail about your past.
While providing context and detail is important, you don't want to get bogged down by exposition. Make sure that when you’re telling your failure story, you are concise and to the point.
If you’re not sure how to stay on track, remind yourself to focus on the key factors that led to the failure and what you learned as a result. Everything else is, in the end, unnecessary to the story’s result.
While it’s important to give the interviewer some insight into your life, you don’t want to choose too personal of a failure. This might make the entire story uncomfortable.
Plus, diving into something that’s too far removed from a difficult situation in the workplace won’t give the interviewer the necessary information. For example, don’t talk about a failed relationship. This story has no real connection to how you might fail at day-to-day tasks in the workplace.
The last and most important mistake to avoid is not showing true transformation due to your failure. The interviewer wants to hear this, and skimping on the details here will not answer the question.
When concluding your story, highlight the specific actions you took to address the failure and the changes you made going forward. This will let the interviewer know that you are capable of change. So, if you fail at a task at this new job, you can learn from it and improve. Taking criticism is an incredibly important part of learning a new job.
By telling your failure story compellingly and concisely and avoiding the above mistakes, you’re very likely to succeed in your interview.
It can be difficult to get this question right, especially as it feels personal. But staying focused and staying on track (not to mention being prepared for the question in the first place) will likely bring about a positive result.