Why do interviewers ask about failure?

Interviewers ask about failure to assess your self-awareness, resilience, problem-solving skills, and ability to learn from your mistakes. They want to see that you can take responsibility and grow from setbacks.

What is the STAR method?

The STAR method is a structured way of responding to behavioral interview questions by discussing the specific Situation, Task, Action, and Result of a situation you were in.

Behavioral Interview

Tell Me About a Time You Failed

Turn a story of failure into a demonstration of your resilience, self-awareness, and commitment to growth using the STAR method.

Example: Answering with the STAR Method

This example shows how to structure your answer to 'Tell me about a time you failed' using the STAR method.

                            Situation: In my previous role, I was leading a project to migrate our customer data to a new CRM system. We had a tight deadline, and I underestimated the complexity of the data mapping required.
                            Task: My responsibility was to ensure a seamless migration with no data loss and minimal downtime.
                            Action: I pushed the team to meet the original deadline, and in our haste, we didn't perform enough testing on a specific subset of legacy data. When we went live, about 5% of our customer records had incorrect data, which impacted the sales team. I immediately took responsibility, rolled back the migration for the affected segment, and assembled a small team to manually clean the data. We then re-ran the migration for that segment after thorough testing.
                            Result: Although the initial launch was a failure, we were able to correct the issue within 48 hours. The key takeaway for me was the importance of building in more time for testing and validation, especially with complex data. I created a new pre-launch checklist that included more rigorous data validation steps, which we used for all subsequent migration projects, and they all went smoothly.
                        

Our AI Coach can help you practice answering this and other tough behavioral questions, refining your stories to be more impactful and authentic.