Tell Me About a Time You Failed: Why It Is Asked & How To Answer [With Sample Answers]

You’re eager to make a good impression, but the interviewer asks you to talk about a time you’ve failed.

What should you do? How do you respond truthfully without putting off a prospective employer by discussing an incident that saw your business lose money?

You are not alone. Many people struggle with how to handle answering questions like, tell me about the time you failed.  Fortunately, there are ways to navigate tough questions like this.

In this article, we’re going to discuss why interviewers ask the tell me about a time you failed question and how to answer it.

Why Do Interviewers Ask “Tell Me About a Time You Failed”?

Interviewers who inquire about failure typically attempt to learn more about you and comprehend your approach to difficulties.

The question seems rooted in understanding how someone will behave if they fail at something. That gives insight into fundamental skills that might not otherwise arise during a conversation.

Many interviewers want to know how you would respond to a challenging situation. They’re also interested in hearing about your problem-solving abilities.

Interviewers are also looking for signs of overconfidence, which can be detrimental in some circumstances and unforgivable in others.

They may also want to see if you have the capacity for self-reflection, which reflects well on your personality.

For example, asking someone to share their biggest failure lets the company understand time and project management. That could help the hiring managers select the candidate best suited for the position.

What is the Interviewer Looking For?

Your response to the question, “tell me about a time you failed,” can reveal more about your general sincerity and responsibility.

Nobody enjoys working with someone continually assigning blame and refusing to accept accountability for their actions.

Interviewers want to know that you can admit defeat, pick yourself up, and try again. It all comes down to what you take away from your mistakes and your efforts to improve.

Other things the interviewers are looking for when asking this question include:

• How you operate at work
• If you make similar mistakes in their company, will you blame your coworkers
• Whether the failure had a positive impact on you

How To Answer “Tell Me About a Time You Failed”

While posing this question, interviewers are searching for a few essential things, even though everyone’s response will vary depending on their prior work experience.

Here are several tips to help you craft an impressive response.

What to Focus On When Answering This Question

Below are several crucial things you should focus on when answering “tell me about a time you failed.”

• Show Your Manager What You Learned: To impress your hiring manager, demonstrate how you’ve improved since that earlier failure. That is how you distinguish yourself from other job applicants and present yourself as the ideal candidate.
• Practice Complex Questions: Consider your previous experience as you formulate an answer well before your interview. Make a list of the main points you wish to address and use that as the basis for your response.
• Take Responsibility for Your Past Actions: Accept responsibility for your errors because we are all human. Trying to cover up your mistakes by blaming others is not good for your reputation.

What To Avoid When Answering This Question

Here are things to avoid if the hiring team asks you about a time you failed.

• Avoid Saying Things That Make You Sound Careless: Never convey carelessness in an interview. Comprehending the seriousness of mistakes would be best because your work is crucial. Failures shouldn’t be shrugged off; the interviewer won’t like responses like that.
• Avoid Blaming Others: Never blame any of your managers or coworkers. It’s about understanding how to accept responsibility. Blaming others for your flaws is a simple way to eliminate oneself from being considered.
• Don’t Ramble: Always give clear and specific answers to the interview questions. In addition, aim to respond to the question in 1-2 minutes. Consider organizing your thoughts and planning how to respond before your interview.

Examples: How to Answer “Tell Me About a Time You Failed”

Let’s discuss several answers to “tell me about a time you failed,” depending on different types of interviews.

Example Answer 1

“One of the first tasks my firm gave me was to create a new software program for one of our clients.

Regrettably, the job cost more than anticipated, and we were two months late. That was a difficult scenario because our client was quite dissatisfied.

Afterward, I set up weekly check-ins with each team member, and we regularly discussed our budget in team meetings.

All of our projects since then have been successful, and everyone has the room to express their creativity.”

Why This Answer Works

The reply to the question is effective because it demonstrates real-life examples and why one should develop solutions after failing to meet their objectives.

The hiring team can easily relate to the speaker’s situation. Thus, it’s a fantastic starting point.

Also, the fact that the speaker talks about how the client was dissatisfied shows the extent of the mistakes. In addition, the speaker mentioned the steps taken to ensure such mistakes don’t happen again.

Example Answer 2

“My previous employer allowed me to interview and hire entry-level workers for a newly created team when I first assumed a managerial role.

They exhibited several “red flags” and lacked the essential expertise.

The CEO had to let them go, and it took some time for hiring to resume. I understood the value of following my instincts and asking for advice from others when in doubt.”

Why This Answer Works

The speaker tries to keep the attention on the good from the scenario, even when discussing a failure.

In addition, they don’t assign blame but instead, take responsibility. The speaker didn’t single out specific team members.

Although the mistakes are quite damaging, the speaker was able to reflect, learn from them, and ensure the hiring team was a perfect match for the company.

Example Answer 3

“As I’m usually quite results-driven, I felt I had let my team and myself down when I didn’t reach my sales targets.

My quarterly sales goals were always high, but I consistently achieved them—except for one quarter when I fell $20,000 short.

I realized that we had lost some of the more individualized components of customer service that made us stand out in favor of numbers.

I revised our approach for the upcoming quarter, and I’m pleased to report that we achieved our goal.”

Why This Answer Works

The response is effective as the speaker directly says what made them not achieve their normal sales. After identifying their mistakes, they devised working strategies to ensure they met the objectives.

Furthermore, the response to the question indicated it was an honest mistake, which with the necessary procedures, was solved. However, avoid giving a response like this if it relates to the position you are looking for.

Additional Tips for Impressing Hiring Managers Asking Tell Me About a Time You Failed

While it’s challenging to impress the interviewer about a time you failed, you can still do so even if you aren’t prepared.

Follow the tips below to answer the interviewer: “tell me about a time you failed.”

Pick a Real Life Failure

Don’t try to avoid this by mentioning that you once received a B in a college course. Nonetheless, it would help if you generally steer clear of any monumental failures relevant to the position you’re looking for.

For instance, if you’re applying for an account management role, you might want to hold back on discussing when you lost your company’s biggest customer in a major scandal.

If the interviewer requests a work-related scenario explicitly, try if at all possible, to choose a story that occurred a long time ago.

Choose a story where something significant went wrong due to your actions (or inaction), not something minor that you can categorize as an error.

Define What’s Failure

Once you’ve decided on your narrative, define failure in a way that fits the context. Once you establish the failure, your story need not be apparent.

Instead, it need only be whatever failure means to you, which reveals how you approach your work to the interviewer.

You’ll explain why you believed this situation to be a failure, so you won’t need to discuss some colossal failure in which everything goes catastrophically wrong.

Tell Your Failure Story

Tell the narrative you selected now that you’ve established how you view failure. Go right to the point without spending too much time setting the stage.

Go to the section of your response where you deal with the failure immediately. Interviewers aren’t asking this question to see you flinch; they want to know how you handle setbacks.

It’s only normal to want to justify a choice using your interpretative framework while discussing failure.

Eliminating explanation words from your story (such as “because,” “why,” “knew,” “understand,” “decided,” and “realized”) is one easy method to reduce interpretation.

Additional Questions To Be Aware Of

Here are other crucial questions interviewers ask you should prepare for before an interview.

• Two Truths And a Lie: Avoid providing ridiculous replies to keep things interesting. Choose comments that can still be completely factual while maintaining their shock value.
• What is Your Greatest Weakness?: Clearly state your weakness (ideally with details rather than generalizations that recruiting managers have heard a thousand times). Briefly describe a period when your shortcoming had an impact on your work.
• Why Did You Leave Your Last Job?: The hiring team wants to know whether it’s risky to hire you as their employee.
• Tell Me About a Time You Made a Mistake: Choose the appropriate mistake to discuss. Clearly describe the circumstances and inform the interviewer of the error you made. Next, describe the immediate steps you took to resolve the error.
• How Do You Handle Stress?: Illustrate and explain the method(s) you use to cope. You can also speak about the pressure that drives you.

Wrapping Up

To have an easy time answering, “tell me about a time you failed,” you must prepare adequately.

You should also ask questions yourself and provide valid answers because that’s what makes you unique from other candidates.

A sincere and careful response to this question will persuade them that you are the best person for the position.

We hope our guide on tell me about a time you failed was helpful. If you have any questions, let us know in the comment section below.