Imagine getting a call for the interview, you attended a few days ago and you started making preparations for it with much determination. You recalled all those ‘impactful’ or ‘memorable’ things that you have done in your career life and worked on putting together brilliant sounding answers that you can use as your impressions to grow a leaf at the interview to impress the interviewer only to be asked these types of awful questions: Let us know about that the Biggest Failure -Interview Question & Answers.
“What has been your biggest failure?”
“What was the losing point of your life?”
“How many times did you fail?”
“How did you fail despite the availability of resources?”
One of the most difficult questions asked to potential candidates, which no doubt leaves an uneasy feeling to the interviewee to respond to. Apparently, no one wants to talk about the times they failed, especially in a job interview when you are already in a stressful situation. But questions such as these “tell us about a time when you failed…” or “tell us about a time when you made an awful mistake…” or “tell us about a time when you made a miserable decision…” can be asked in a job interview in order to test your potential or to see if you are willing to accept and own your mistakes and accept your failures and obviously, learn from them in future.
It has been well quoted by someone “if you are not making mistakes then you are not doing your job”. Do not let these questions catch you off guard because you fall seven and stand up eight! Answer these questions with immense interest while reminiscing the hardships you had to go through. Be honest because one of the best traits a human can acquire is honesty with acceptance.
How do you speak out about your failures when asked?
Reminiscing to tell a person that you are actually trying to impress about a time when you made a huge mistake can be alarming, but fortunately, we have some tips to help make your interviewing experience a little easier. Here is some simply decent tips to help you find an answer of your own:
Be honest in quantity
No matter how many times you failed, pick up one of the most moralistic ones that gave you lessons to learn, mistakes to rectify and decisions to diversify.
Conquer your failure
Let them know about the lessons that you learnt, the progress that you made, and the mistakes that made you improve your performance. Let lessons be learned from the mistakes.
Circumstances
There is always time, places or situations that are hindering one’s circumstances. It might be a time when you could not show up due to illness and that hindered your project resulting in poor results. Describe the situation and make sure to avoid blaming others. Specify the reason (s) why you failed with clear justifications.
Set right
Do not forget to mention what you went through to correct the mistake that you gave rise to. In addition, discussing the obstacles you once went through might have a spectacular impression on the interviewer.
Being held responsible
Acceptance is the first key to success no matter how deep the mistake was. Accepting your failures and mistakes makes you more attentive towards your future goals. Take responsibility and prevent making explanations for the failure.
The STAR technique
One famous and very revised technique used to answer these types of behavioural questions is the STAR technique which is an abbreviation of Situation, Task, Action and Result.
S: Situation: What got you into the situation that made you characterize as a failure?
T: Task: Remark the task that you did in that specific situation or the one you were supposed to do.
A: Action: What action do you undertake to cope up with the failure, to change positions on, or to deal with the outcomes?
R: Result: What was the result of that failure? Did you discover something out of it or did your confidence get a big disappointment in the way?
This hypothesis is most suited for behavioural questions and has been approved to be beneficial for the interviewees.
Confidence
Embrace yourselves with acceptance and let confidence radiate from you! Make sure you use a convincing tone and low voice to express you were guilty of what you did.
Expect nothing
The best stories of disappointments permits you to voice a convincing story. It is because you learned something and grew from that particular failure and not just because you wanted to satisfy others’ expectations.
Self-consciousness
Invest enough time to explain what you have learned about yourself rather than the experience itself. Instead of wasting your time on how it went wrong, pinpoint the whys and wherefores behind the case and take enough time emphasising on what you have understood and what you now do contrarily. Decipher the actions you took to guarantee that you would not achieve the same mistake again.
Avoid the BLAME GAME
Avoid playing the blame game. Do not find excuses for your behaviour, actions or mistakes. Make them know that you submit your errors and are aware of your faults.
Interviewers are interested in what you have learned through your failure. They are interested in knowing where wrong you went or what good or bad you did. This is because neither they take pleasure in your pain nor because they want to see, you shudder. Nevertheless, because they want to see, how you have overcome and tackled it with adversities and obstacles.
These types of questions are, in a way, good for you to test yourself with problem-solving skills and analyse how aware you are of your own stability and shortcomings.
Hiring administrators know that everyone makes mistakes and it is humane to make mistakes. Providing senseless answers and brushing off prior negligence can make you sound careless. Interviewers may think you do not take your failures too leniently and are reluctant to hold yourself accountable for your actions that made you fail. Show a modest attitude while talking about the blunders you have made, and show gratification and dignity when you talk about what you have learned from your past mistakes.
To correctly answer these questions, let us get started with some of the dos and don’ts and sample answer questions, which define the condition generously.
What has been your biggest failure?
Unlike other questions, this one can leave an interviewee in a particular deep unsettling feeling. But do not falter making them understand how you actually felt.
Do’s: How to answer it correctly: Make sure to include all the tips provided above.
Don’ts- How not to answer this question:
“I never had failures.”
“I merely had some setbacks.”
“There are too many to pick up from.”
“There was a time when everything went down. But obviously, it was not my fault.”
Here are some answers to behavioural questions asked during an interview:
Sample Answer 1- Supermarket Employee
“I had my fair share of failures. However, later I realized that it is these failures that made me a better version of myself. For occurrence, there was a time at my aforementioned job. I was in a bad mood due to some family conflicts and an angry customer showed up. One of my greatest regrets is I showed her a little bit of my attitude. It ended up with her cursing me in front of the whole store, which resulted in my manager stepping between the both of us. I was fired after that. Up until that point, I had never been expelled. I was so embarrassed to acknowledge that I had acted in such an inappropriate way on impulse, and it made it overwhelming to get another customer service duty. To keep my temper under control, I started doing things that can help me calm down in fierce dilemmas. I also started putting myself in a better mood by doing my hobbies before the day starts. Eventually, I learned to have patience with my customers even though I will have my equal share of good and bad days”.
Sample Answer 2- College Intern
“I’ve never been an up to date student. A very obedient student was far from my reach. Nevertheless, thanks to this failed experience I realised this failure to be a boon for me. Once I had a given time period to work on a particular subject assignment. I kept thinking that the due date is not close and thus kept delaying it. It was one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made in my life. It resulted in me having to do one monthly worth of work in a week while also managing to balance the time to study for exams and prepare for PowerPoint presentations in my other subject classes. My final grade on the project was a near to the ground D plus. In addition, I failed a test for another subject. Nonetheless, I got a passing score; I knew I could have done much better if I had balanced my time more efficiently. This experience taught me about the magnitudes of putting off things. From the time then, I attempt to allot as much as enough time to each of my subject assignments. Now that I have learned from the mistake I manage my time and do my best in all of my projects.”
Sample Answer 3- Clerk
“During my internship days, I used to work as a receptionist at my local school, and the school used a computer operating system that I was very foreign to. In spite of disclosing that I required a training session for the computer software system, I agreed to figure it out on my own. Unfortunately, that ended up having me accidentally misplacing several student accounts. Supposedly, the parents were furious and my head supervisor was frustrated beyond having to fix my mistake. This made me realized how important it is to ask for help when you are in need of it no matter how little knowledge you have or how little experienced you are, especially when you are controlling other people’s time and money. Thanks to this experience, now I do speak up if I am sceptical about things at work, and pay close attention to my routine to avoid making future blunders.”
Sample Answer 4- Teacher
The biggest anyone can do is assume too much about their profession. A mistake I made often. During the course of my coaching career and especially during my schooling sessions in a classroom, with a bunch of students, half my age I’ve acknowledged this fact. I was confident about myself, so much that, I began my teaching career believing that I knew enough about everything to be a competent and effective teacher and I’m sure that’s the case with many others too. But, I could not have been more wrong. No matter how much one prepares or think they know, there is always more to learn. No instructional programs or teaching training can give you the type of lessons a classroom teaches. I’ve experienced it first hand. I had a certain kind of arrogance about myself and remember once saying “I know more than you and you will like me because I am your teacher”, to my students. And boy oh boy! how wrong was I. A number of times in the classroom or in teaching situations when I did not know as much as I thought I knew and it was at those moments that I could not let my ego or defensiveness takeover. Instead, I improved myself by learning from my inadequacies. Learning from my students and how they responded to me as a teacher. That is how I prevented future similar failures. It is this lesson that I vow never to ignore. I would never let my ego take the best of me and let it blind me in the future. Now that I am aware, never will I stop learning from kids no matter how small they are. No matter how half their age will be in comparison to mine. It’s the small; minute things that make a huge lot of difference”
Sample Answer 5- Fashion Designer
“I have faced many obstacles in my career, and I personally feel that failures practically change your temperament. Once I came across a very arrogant customer. Since I was unable to choose target customers at the start of my career, I started working under a professional fashion designer. So this customer decided to show me an attitude to the type of product I picked up to design. I gave up my idea of showing her my point of view. It was as if I was going out of my way to help her but still, it did not convince her. After throwing a lot of rackets and arguments she agreed on a particular layout. The end result came out wonderful. After this experience, I realized it’s not only the fashion designers who study fashion and excel in their jobs but also the normal public- innate fashionable people out there with conventional taste in fashion. That was the point I acknowledged that a degree or diploma is not what it needs to be important in fashion. Fashion can come in handy to some people. People like her. I just need to pay heed to people.”
Sample Answer 6- Event Manager
“My greatest failure was that once I did not agree to the suggestions given by my assistants for the events that were to be held in a college. It was the festive season. We met a problem and I was contemplating with my team on a project. My assistants suggested something regarding the same, which the other members of the team thought it to be authentic, but I was reluctant. But, later after things turned out to be tragic and everything went down the drain; the event which was supposed to be the biggest event for the whole academic session of the college ended up into a disaster and I was remorseful. I realized that the suggestion was satisfactory and that it would have been enforced much earlier. Concluding from this mistake, now, I don’t shoo away anybody’s advice just because he or she is an assistant or whatever job level he or she is on. If the suggestion is favourable and implementable then I think of carrying it out as soon as possible.”
Sample Answer 7- HR
“I was the HR of my former company. One of my superintendents gave me the task of interviewing and hiring the new job candidates for the customer service crew. I hired those people who were keen and passionate enough to match that level. I did a background check and came to know about their social media handles. Still, I gave them a chance. However, soon I realized I had made a dreadful mistake. But those elementary people were melodramatic with a poor attitude. This aspect aggravated my team’s project. Things went so crookedly that I eventually had to fire them. That experience has taught me how important is every person’s role in constructing the vitality of all the employees at work and that I should trust my instinct more.”
Sample Answer 8-Product Design Manager
“During my stay at a company in the States I was industrious not only about establishing goals but also encountering them on time. My team and I were given the responsibility to operate a project. Unfortunately, we failed to meet the expected percentage of production of products. So, I took accountability for it. Because I speculate that in its place of motivating and complimenting my fellow employees for performances, I pushed my team too hard to meet the production quota. In reconsideration, I think that, be it anyone in your work place, one needs to be encouraged and facilitated to a proficient extent to allow him or her to be as efficient as possible.”
Sample Answer 9- Student
There are many failures that I have faced in my competent life, each one of them has taught me many valuable lessons. But this was when I was in first year of college and the most spectacular one. Once I was appointed as the head of my college quiz committee. We had an inter college quiz competition and so we started practicing together. Apart from our practice sessions, we also worked out on our other strategies as well. One day, one of my teammate and I argued and because of which we could not concentrate on the higher objective that was- winning the competition. Due to that, we lost. Nevertheless, that situation made me thinking some of the most important traits i.e. efficiency and partnership. I should have not taken my personal feelings into my professional domain because doing that would eventually be chaotic and it did. I am gratified that I learned this trait thanks to this hardship.”
Sample Answer 10- Chief Executive
“Once I was given the responsibility of a project for one of our prime clients in my ex company. I was too enthusiastic to gratify them that my excitement got the best of me and due to that I told them we can manage the project within a couple of weeks. I believed this was attainable, but unfortunately, it panned out taking more than the given notice. Thus, they were not pleased. Glimpsing back, I felt I should have been more cautious in my calculation to the client. I now realize that a client is not going to be disappointed if you are specific about the timeline in an upsurge, but they are definitely going to be disheartened if you gave assurance about something and then don’t submit to it. Therefore, I took this ordeal as a lesson and used it to serve much better at managing the expectations of the clients’ nowadays. For instance, on the next plan with a different party, I told them it would take six weeks and we completed in four weeks. They were very immensely content about it and even gave our company a bonus.”
Once you are done illustrating your failure, you are now free to talk about your success and things you learned from many of your failures. It was only these failed experiences, which has embarked you to this new journey of being successful in many different prospects of your professional life.
