How To Answer “Tell Me About A Time You Failed” (With Examples)

Getting asked “Tell me about a time you failed” in an interview can happen at any moment, so it’s important to know how to answer correctly. This common interview question is a job interviewer’s bread and butter, as it’s a chance for them to learn a lot about you in many different ways at once — from the story you choose to tell to how much responsibility you take on yourself for the mistake.

To help you answer what the interviewer is looking for, we’ll go over how to answer “Tell me about a time you failed”, provide some sample answers, as well as go over some common mistakes to avoid when answering this interview question.
Key Takeaways:

• Be honest with the interviewer about your mistake.

• Make sure you prepare your answer ahead of time. You don’t want to look like a deer in headlights when you’re asked this question.

• Talk about how you have grown and what you have done to fix the mistake.

How to answer “Tell me about a time you failed”

When answering “Tell me about a time you failed” you need to be honest about your answer and show the interviewer what you learned from your mistake. Here is a more detailed list of how to answer this interview question:

1. Be honest. It’s important to choose a real failure for your story, and for you to own up to that failure. Giving someone an honest portrayal of a time that you made a mistake at work means nothing if you end it with “…but it wasn’t really my fault, anyway.”

   This goes beyond the obvious dishonesty of making up an answer out of whole cloth, which by itself would be a pretty obvious ploy (unless you’re a very good liar). The biggest mistake people make with this answer isn’t that they lie outright about their biggest failure, but instead, it’s that they choose an answer that isn’t really a failure at all.

2. Show that you learned from your mistake. You’ll want to demonstrate how you learned from this failure and what you did to help resolve it. A hiring manager wants to see how you handled it and how it affected the outcome.

3. Think ahead to the ending. What has the hiring manager learned about you from you telling about this experience? Did they learn that you know how to accept and move on from mistakes, or that you have some serious character flaws that might prevent you from being a good job candidate?

4. Use the STAR method. STAR is (situation, task, action, result) to give your answer a coherent narrative that’s easy to follow. In fact, the STAR method works for all behavioral interview questions.

Example answers to “Tell me about a time you failed”

Here are some tell me about a time you failed examples as well as some common failures that you can use when answering this interview question:

1. Tell me about a time you failed at a task at work example answer

   “When I started my first internship, I was overly eager to go the extra mile. So much so that I agreed to take on unrealistic deadlines with coworkers. I was late completing at least one task each week, and my coworkers were not happy with me.

   After that experience, I devised a tracking system to make sure I knew how long each task would realistically take, and made sure never to fall behind again. I understand now that it’s better to give a longer timeline and be early than promise the moon and fail to deliver.”

   Why it works: This answer works well because he owns up to his mistake and shows awareness that it was negatively affecting his coworkers. It’s always good when you can show that you see yourself from other people’s perspectives. He also shows how he grew from the experience and turned this weakness into an organizational strength.

2. Tell me about a time you failed to follow the proper protocol example answer

   “The biggest mistake that I made at my last job as a warehouse foreman involved a duplicate order that went out. There had been an issue with the new software that the corporate office installed, but I failed to follow the proper protocol that would have caught this mistake. Luckily, the client was very understanding, but I now keep a checklist for each and every order to ensure consistency.”

   Why it works: Notice that she brings up that a software error contributed to the mistake without trying to completely exonerate herself. She owns up to her part in the error. Also, she’s not complacent just because the client wasn’t upset; that shows that she holds herself to a high standard in all her work.

3. Tell me about a time something didn’t go as planned example answer

   “About a year ago, I was working on a project with a tight deadline. We had a plan and were making good progress until a critical team member fell ill unexpectedly and had to take a prolonged medical leave. At first, we tried to redistribute the workload among the remaining team members, but it quickly became apparent that it was too much for us to handle without compromising the quality of the project.

   I communicated this with the manager and proposed a few alternatives. We eventually decided to bring in a temporary contractor to fill in for the absent team member. Although this situation was challenging, we were able to adapt and keep the project on track.”

   Why it works: This answer works because the candidate was able to demonstrate their ability to adapt to unexpected challenges. They were also able to show their problem-solving skills and this skill is crucial in any setting.

4. Tell me about at time when you lost a customer example answer

   “I lost a customer when I was responsible for managing a key account for my previous company. The relationship with the customer had been positive for a long time, but due to a series of unforeseen circumstances, we couldn’t meet their needs and expectations.

   I recognized the importance of maintaining a strong relationship with the customer and took the initiative to communicate with them openly about the challenges we were facing. I expressed empathy for their situation and assured them that we valued their feedback. I also provided a clear timeline for when we could realistically address their request.

   Despite my efforts, the customer decided to switch to a competitor that could meet their immediate needs. In the aftermath of this loss, we implemented improvements and proactively reached out to other customers to gather feedback and address their concerns.”

   Why it works: This answer works because the candidate took ownership and accountability and acknowledged that losing a customer was a shared responsibility. The answer also showed that they were willing to learn from their mistake and improve and grow to avoid it from happening again.

Examples of failures for interviews

Here are some examples of failure you can use when answering this interview question:

• Failure to meet a project deadline

• Ignoring customer feedback

• Taking on too many responsibilities at once and failing to complete them

• Not meeting other expectations

• Over-promising to help others when you can’t

• Failing an assignment

• Not getting a job

• Underestimating a project’s budget and overspending

• Miscommunication with a team member

Why interviewers ask “Tell me about a time you failed”

Interviewers ask you to tell them about a time you failed because it’s a behavioral interview question, which means the interviewer wants to see how the interviewee performed in a past situation. In this case, an unpleasant situation where you messed up.

Talking about one of your work-related failures can give a hiring manager a lot of insight into what kind of employee you might turn out to be. But it’s a lot harder than other common interview questions like “Tell me about yourself.”

Having to tell a person you’re actively trying to impress about a time when you made a huge mistake can be daunting, but fortunately, we’ve got some tips to help make your interviewing experience a little easier.

When it comes to talking about a failure of yours to a potential employer, the fear can be palpable. Which do you choose? How do you frame it to make yourself look good without seeming dishonest?

Common mistakes to avoid when answering “Tell me about a time you failed”

You should avoid putting the blame on others or bringing up any failures that involve a crime. Here are some more common mistakes to avoid when answering this question:

• Putting blame on others. To repeat ourselves one last time, this is a story about why you failed. The tendency to try to excuse yourself from blame is a natural impulse, but if it wasn’t your fault, then you didn’t really fail — you were just a victim of circumstance. In which case, the whole story you just told has absolutely no bearing on the question you were asked.

• Bringing up failures involving a crime. There are a lot of mistakes a person can make while they’re on the job. As long as a person learns from them, it’s usually okay, but there are certain scenarios in which a mistake is so colossal that it doesn’t really matter whether or not you learned anything from it.

  Don’t bring up that particular story. That might seem like an extreme case, but it’s happened before. But even less extreme examples, like talking about how you missed three weeks’ worth of meetings before getting fired, can still set off a lot of red flags.

• Claiming you haven’t failed at anything. Hiring managers will question your honesty. They will also think you might be pushing the blame on others and not taking any blame. Everyone fails at something at one point or another, we are only human after all.

Tips for answering “Tell me about a time you failed”

Behavioral interview questions like this are all about the future, not the past. Sure, you need to own up to your weaknesses. And then you do need to, you know, actually mention how you’ve grown and built strengths off the experience.

• Focus on how you moved forward. This is the most important part of the story you’re telling — how, after having failed or made some kind of major mistake, you were able to grow and change as both a person and an employee. While managers would prefer that all their employees be perfect all the time, they know that realistically the people under them are going to screw up on occasion. They can forgive that.

  What they can’t forgive, however, is someone who makes the same mistakes over and over again. A person who can’t learn from their mistakes is not a good employee. Speaking of red flags as we were a moment ago, this is pretty much the biggest. Basically, your story needs a happy ending.

• Bring up extenuating factors Maybe part of the reason why you missed so many meetings was that your dog had become sick recently and you were spending extra time taking care of her. That’s a good thing to mention, and it helps to humanize some of your decision-making.

  But you still need to bring it back to the problem at hand — in this case, that you were missing meetings, and you hadn’t yet spoken to your boss about the reasons why. Whatever the extenuating factors, your productivity was suffering and you were missing work responsibilities. In the telling of your story, these things still need to be your fault, so that you can go on to recover from them and grow at the end of the story.

“Tell me about a time you failed” FAQs

1. How do you answer a job interview question about failure?

   To answer a job interview question about failure, you will want to:

   • Be honest

   • Show that you learned from your failure

   • Focus on the future

   • Use the STAR method to answer your question

   These steps ensure that you answer the question in such a way that shows you are a qualified candidate for the position. Everyone makes mistakes at work, but it is how you overcome your failures that help define you as a professional.

2. What are examples of failing at work?

   Examples of failing at work include:

   • Missing a deadline

   • Losing a client

   • Not making a sale

   • Deleting a project file by accident

   • Unable to speak in public

   • Not responding to an important email on time

There are many examples of failing at work because it happens all the time. You probably have a few that are so common, you didn’t even realize it. You don’t need to beat yourself up when you look back on your own failures.

3. What is a failure in a positive way?

   Failure in a positive is re-framed as an opportunity. It may seem surprising, but failure offers opportunity. It offers the opportunity to learn from your mistakes, to take what you have learned, and to grow as an individual. Additionally, failure can lead to new circumstances which provide new opportunities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

4. What are the types of failure?

   There are many types of failure, such as preventable failure, systemic failure, and intelligent failure. Preventable, or predicted, failure is the result of deviating from a process known to avoid failures. Systemic failure is the failure that is the result of an entire systemic causing an issue, which in turn affects the system throughout. Intelligent failure is failure that comes from trial and error as you test for some sort of result.

5. How do you talk about a failure in an interview?

   When discussing a failure in an interview, be sure to describe the situation and explain what went wrong. The best way to do this is to use the STAR (situation, task, action, and result) method in your answer. Once you discuss the situation, you should talk about what you learned and what actions you will take to improve yourself so the mistake doesn’t happen again.

Final thoughts

So now you’ve got the general idea of it. Talking about your mistakes is easy, but not always advisable. But talking about the right mistakes, and going on to talk about how you’ve grown and implemented changes to the way you work based on these mistakes — that’s how you’ll impress a hiring manager.

And that’s how I learned I should never suddenly raise pharmaceutical prices all at once. I’m a better person now. Now I raise them slowly over time, so no one notices they’re being overcharged.”

The question might be to talk about a time you failed, but that’s not quite true. What employers really want to know is how you went on to succeed in the face of a previous failure.

After all, everyone loves an underdog story.

References

1. U.S. Department of Labor – Interview Tips

2. Harvard Business Review – How to Answer “Tell Me About a Time You Failed” in a Job Interview

Author

Ryan Morris

Ryan Morris was a writer for the Zippia Advice blog who tried to make the job process a little more entertaining for all those involved. He obtained his BA and Masters from Appalachian State University.