Why This Question
Interviewers grasp that perfection isn’t attainable for anyone. Their focus lies in assessing your self-awareness regarding your weaknesses and your capacity to learn from mistakes. Failures offer insights into your traits as an employee, revealing if you’re willing to take calculated risks and venture beyond your comfort zone to reach objectives. This inquiry also unveils your perspective on risk, failure, and success overall. If you’ve never encountered failure, it’s possible you’ve avoided risks and missed out on opportunities for success as well.
G Strategy: Team Failure
Select an actual workplace failure pertinent to your current role. Focus on a scenario where a single aspect didn’t proceed as anticipated. This approach ensures a concise narrative, allowing for a clear articulation of the lesson learned and potential improvements for the future. Opting for a team failure can be beneficial since it involves shared responsibility, but it’s crucial to acknowledge your part in the failure.
In real-life scenarios, the U-shaped curve can depict the trajectory of failure or setbacks within personal development or career progression.
Consider the experience of learning a new skill or taking on a challenging project. At the beginning (“left side of the U”), there might be a period of excitement and enthusiasm, but also a high likelihood of making mistakes or encountering failures. This phase represents the initial struggle and the steep learning curve associated with tackling something new.
As one gains experience and proficiency (“bottom of the U”), failures decrease, and competence increases. This phase reflects a time of increased confidence and improved skill where the individual is adept at handling tasks with minimal errors.
However, with increasing complexity or reaching a plateau in skill development (“right side of the U”), there might be a resurgence of failures or setbacks. This phase could indicate encountering more intricate challenges, pushing the boundaries of one’s abilities, or facing unexpected hurdles that lead to temporary setbacks despite previous competence.
Understanding this U-shaped pattern in personal or professional growth can emphasize the importance of persistence, continuous learning, and adaptability. It highlights that while initial failures are common while learning something new, there might be a phase of relative success before encountering new challenges that necessitate further adaptation and growth. This awareness encourages individuals to persist through difficulties and embrace setbacks as opportunities for further development.
Share your Story!
Share with the interviewer the story you chose. Keep in mind that the purpose of asking this question is to evaluate how you handle setbacks, so try to rapidly move to the part of the story where you talk about how you managed the failure. You may want to discuss what made the situation challenging and what you did to try to rectify it. Be open about the fact that the situation did not go as planned.
Focus on what you learned
Talk about what you believe went wrong and caused the failure, what you would have done differently and what changes you made moving forward. For example, let’s say your failure was the result of assuming what your customers wanted. Your takeaway from the experience could be that you will never make an assumption again, and in the future, you will perform more market research and survey your customer base—even testing the product with a small sample of people before fully investing in a new product or service.
Example 1
“Several years ago, my supervisor tasked me with interviewing, hiring and training an entry-level person to join our customer service team. I chose to hire someone who seemed eager to learn and, based on past work experiences, seemed to have a lot of potential. I did have a few concerns after checking their social media sites but chose to hire them anyway. I quickly learned it was a mistake and that their social media activity was a strong indication of their behavior at work. They were highly dramatic, had a poor attitude and impacted the entire team until I had to fire them.
The experience taught me how important every hiring decision is, from senior staff to interns. Each person impacts company morale and culture. It also taught me not to rush to make any hiring decisions and get feedback if I have concerns about a candidate. I’ve learned to trust my intuition more. However, it’s a lesson I’m glad I learned earlier in my career.”
Example 2
“I took a job where I was responsible for building a sales team that would fix the major revenue problems the company was having. I was overly confident in my abilities and certain I would be able to accomplish the goal. After arriving, though, I realized the problems were not just in revenue but in the way the company was organized. I knew within one month that I wouldn’t be able to make the impact I anticipated.
I briefly considered quitting when I knew I wouldn’t come close to the sales goals I promised, but instead, I decided to focus on the things I could control. I met with the company’s executives and altered our sales goals for the year. We also decided to scale back the size of my team and bring on a consultant to fix some of the company’s deeper problems. Being in this situation reminded me of the importance of focusing on what you can control and collaborating to find solutions to complex problems. I also learned a hard lesson in humility and of not jumping in and making promises before fully understanding the scope of the problem.”
Example 3
“I was managing a project where a new client wanted a large number of unique product descriptions written to improve the SEO ranking of their site. Because they were a new client and I wanted to impress them with the kind of results we could produce, I assured them we could have it back to them in two weeks. I thought this was doable with multiple writers working on the project, but in the end, it took an extra week, and they were not happy.
We apologized and reassured them that the mistake wouldn’t happen again. I realized that it’s far better to under-promise and over-deliver. The client isn’t going to be upset when you are clear about what the timeline is from the beginning. Problems arise when you can’t meet promised deadlines. I used this experience to be more cautious in managing client expectations. For the next client project I worked on, I made sure to include extra time for unforeseen circumstances and told them we would deliver in four weeks. We delivered in three, and they couldn’t have been more thrilled.”
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