“Biggest failure” interviews are a popular way for companies to gauge your potential for future success. The question doesn’t have an easy answer, but there are ways you can make it more helpful than harmful. Here’s how.

Don’t be too self-critical

Don’t choose a failure that you are still ashamed of. It’s fine to be honest about your mistakes, but don’t point out something you feel is too embarrassing to share with others.

Don’t choose a failure that you feel bad about—it can come across as self-deprecating, which is not what an interviewer wants to hear from you.

Avoid choosing something like this: “I don’t know if I would have done anything differently in my career.” This isn’t necessarily a bad answer because the interviewer will likely ask why it wasn’t done differently; however, if they think negatively of your answer (say they think “nobody should ever do such things”), then they might not hire someone who has made those mistakes before!

Choose a real failure

The question is a good one, and it can be a difficult one to answer. But there are important things to consider when choosing a failure:

• Choose something that you have been able to talk about in a positive way. You should not choose something that makes you look bad or makes others feel bad about themselves.
• It needs to happen within the last five years (or at least before then). This means that if your most recent failure was more than five years ago, it may not be appropriate for this interview question!
• It should be something that you have been able to learn from and improve. If it was a failure that you had no control over—perhaps it was beyond your control or the result of someone else’s actions—it is not a good choice for this interview question.

These are all things you should think about when choosing a failure to share with an interviewer.

Choose a failure that has nothing to do with your current job

When answering this question, it’s important to choose a failure that has nothing to do with your current job.

This will help you focus on what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown since then. For example, if you were asked about your biggest failure at work and said, “Well, I guess my boss gave me too much work,” then it’s likely he or she would ask why this was your biggest failure as an employee (rather than asking about something else).

This is a very common question that interviewers will ask, so it’s important to be prepared for it. First, think about some of your past failures and try to pick one that you feel comfortable talking about. If you have trouble coming up with one on the spot, then think about something from high school or college, even if it was not related to work.

If there is any doubt as to whether or not a failure is related or unrelated to your current position, feel free to ask: “What kind of project did we have last year?” This will help clarify the nature of this question.

Choose an experience that taught you something valuable about yourself or the world

Choosing a failure that taught you something valuable about yourself or the world will help show potential employers how much value you bring to their company. Even if it was a failure, there’s still something positive that came out of it—you learned something about yourself and/or the world around us.

For example: “I failed my first sales pitch at work because I didn’t know how to sell myself.” Or: “When I started working full-time after college, I realized how much I missed being independent when I worked part-time during school.” Or even: “My husband and I were homeless for two months when we lost everything in an apartment fire.”

The next step is to explain what you’ve learned from this experience. This will help show potential employers why they should hire you and not someone else because it shows them that you have a clear understanding of how failure happens and how to avoid it in the future.

Choose an experience that you learned from and grew from

The best answer is to talk about your biggest failure and how it made you a better person. This is not just a matter of being able to share the story—it’s also an opportunity for you to show that your experience has helped shape who you are today.

When I was interviewing for my current position at [my company], my interviewer asked me how I handled failure in my career so far. He said he wanted me to give him a sense of who I am as a person after everything that happened in the past year or so (specifically mentioning some mistakes).

When he asked me this question, I knew exactly what he meant: learning from those mistakes and growing from them can make anyone stronger as they move forward with their lives.

Conclusion

Remember, if you’re not comfortable answering the question, tell the interviewer that and move on. You don’t have to answer every question they ask—just go with your gut!

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