How do you handle ‘failure’ questions in job interviews, when you haven’t yet had much opportunity to fail?
When it comes to questions you’ll face in a job interview, some of the most challenging are those that focus on times when you failed. When you made a mistake or a misstep, or when you didn’t achieve what you set out to achieve. That’s true for anyone, at any stage in their career. Literally nobody likes talking about their failures. But if you’re just starting your career, it can be even more difficult. Sure, on one hand, you’re still junior and relatively inexperienced, and companies (most companies, at least) expect that you’ll still make mistakes as you learn. On the other hand, it can be really difficult to come up with a failure that seems ‘big’ enough. At your level of experience, then, how can you best handle this kind of question?
Interview like a STAR
Before we discuss ‘failure’ questions specifically, let’s first talk about story structure. Some interview questions ask you to give examples — or tell stories — from your past experience. These questions are called ‘behavioral’ or ‘situational’ interview questions, since they are designed to get at how you’d behave in a specific kind of situation.
For the best way to answer questions like this, remember the acronym STAR. STAR stands for Situation, Tactic, Action, Result. When you’re giving an example from your experience, your answer should follow that format, for two reasons. First, the narrative structure will help you tell a compelling story: one with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Second, and most importantly, this structure also helps you remember to include each piece of information that an interviewer is listening for.
Let’s look at each part of the story separately.
S: Situation
This part of the story is like ‘once upon a time’; it lays the groundwork. Here, you’re going to talk about what led to the circumstances you’re about to describe. Your answer might be to describe the way a project was assigned to you, or perhaps it might be how you realized that there was a problem that needed to be solved.
T: Tactic
Some people also use the word ‘task’ or ‘target’ here, but the meaning is the same. In this part of the story, describe how the decision was made to do whatever was done. It’s really important here to show the interviewer the thinking behind your decision-making process. Your answer might talk about how you worked with a group to develop a strategy, or maybe you worked alone and used a pro/con (or risk/reward) list to decide what to do.
A: Action
This part of the story is fairly self-explanatory. Here, describe the specific actions that were taken after the decision was made. What would someone have seen you do (or have known you did) if they were there at the time? Don’t forget to give credit to others where credit is due (if you worked as part of a team, for example), but also to take responsibility for the things you did alone.
R: Result
This is the most important section of all, and — ironically- it’s the section most people tend to forget. The ‘R’ is the equivalent of ‘… and they all lived happily ever after’. No story is complete without it. What was the outcome? “The code still wasn’t fixed, there was still a bug and we didn’t launch on time.” “Unfortunately, the customer still wasn’t happy.” “We couldn’t come to a consensus, and we had to agree to disagree.” Any story dealing with a failure certainly has to include those factual details.
Here’s the twist: your stories describing a failure should have two ‘R’s, not just one.
Happily Ever After? Yes and no.
Not every story ends ‘happily ever after’. By definition, questions that ask about failures almost never do. The first ‘R’ acknowledges the facts of that less-than-perfect outcome.
The second ‘R’ is far more important: What did you learn? Everyone fails at some point in their lives, and we all make mistakes (some of us more than others). That’s not what an interviewer cares most about. What they really want to hear is that you see these setbacks as learning opportunities. Mistakes and failures are the best way to learn and grow, because — frankly — they’re usually uncomfortable. We remember the lessons we learn the hard way. And that’s what an interviewer wants to hear: that you took a bad situation, and made the best of it by learning something.
“I realized that I hadn’t given myself enough time to finish the project. Since then, I’ve put a system in place to get an early start, because I don’t want to repeat that mistake.”
“Even though we weren’t able to come to an agreement, I learned a lot about negotiating, and standing up for what I know is right.”
“It took longer than I hoped, but I did find my error in the end. I’ve never forgotten that experience, and I’m confident I’ll never miss that again.”
Talking about the lessons you learned from failure is a powerful key to giving even the most difficult story at least a somewhat happy ending.
Choosing Your Stories Well
Now that you know how to structure your stories, and how to turn a bad story good, the only remaining question is … what stories should you tell?
First, let’s get one thing out of the way. When you’re asked to tell an interviewer about a time when you’ve failed, the worst possible answer to give is, “I never have”. Again, nobody’s perfect. So, saying that you’ve never failed, or that you have no weaknesses, only makes it seem as if you have no self-awareness (or worse, that you’re lying).
At the other end of the spectrum, it also doesn’t help your case to talk about a failure that was catastrophic (of course, I hope and trust that most of you reading this haven’t experienced a catastrophic failure in your career so far). In the unlikely event that something you did caused the downfall of a company, it’s probably best not to use that as your example.
Shoot for the middle ground. What you’re after is an experience where things didn’t quite go your way, or where you made a mistake, but it wasn’t the end of the world. For students and new graduates, the challenge can sometimes be a lack of experiences to draw upon. For this reason, don’t restrict yourself to experiences that are strictly work-related. If you’ve got a story from an internship, or a paid employment experience, great. But equally valid experiences can come from volunteer work you’ve done, from your experiences as a student, even from sports or other team activities you’ve taken part in.
Interviewers are accustomed to listening for transferable skills and experiences. The way someone responds in one situation often translates directly to how they’d respond on the job. If you had an experience working as part of a student project team, for example, that gives an interviewer a preview of what you’d be like working as part of a staff team. An experience working independently from home as a volunteer gives an interviewer an indication of how you act when you’re left alone to do work and solve problems on your own.
(As an aside, these transferable experiences can also be used to illustrate the positive aspects of your profile as a candidate, such as your problem solving abilities, or your leadership potential.)
Still struggling? Maybe it’s the word ‘failure’ that’s throwing you off, so let’s look at the question a different way. When an interviewer asks about a failure, they’re really asking you about a time when …
… you made a mistake (one that you’ve learned from).
… you were aiming for a target or goal that you didn’t achieve.
… you weren’t able to finish something on time.
… you weren’t able to resolve a situation with another person, or a group of people (for example, with a co-worker or a customer, or members of a team).
Thinking about those four concrete areas can help point you towards the experiences you’ve had — at work, at school, or in some other context — that can make for a great story.
In Closing …
Talking about failure is tough. The bad news is, it doesn’t get any easier as you progress in your career. The good news is, you can make it easier on yourself. When you’re on the job search, it pays to prepare some ‘STAR’ stories for common interview questions (and practice them ahead of time) rather than just ‘winging it’ in an interview. This is true most of all with questions that are difficult to talk about, like weaknesses and failures. Prepare yourself, and every story you tell can end ‘happily ever after’.
Hope you are staying safe where you are,
The Jobamax Team
