Interview what was your biggest mistake

On a job opening I was hiring for, I interviewed a candidate who told me that he was project manager for a client that cancelled the project, though this client eventually rehired the firm again. I have had other candidates tell me about projects where the client was unhappy, but then the candidate did something specific e. You never want to linger in your answers to negative interview questions. Answer completely but quickly , and then return back to the rest of the interview.

I once coached a job seeker who made a mistake on the job by falling behind during her inventory audits. She fixed the problem by figuring out why certain departments gave late and incomplete responses and then refining her survey tactics to help those departments along.

Once we pinpointed the mistake and resolution, it was a great story because it showed good problem-solving, communication skills, and flexibility on her part. However, when she first told the story, this job seeker gave me a seminar on inventory management! Had this been a real interview and I was vetting her for a job, I would have stopped listening amidst all the minutiae. Luckily, since this was a practice interview and I was coaching her, I listened long enough to ferret out the mistake and the lesson.

You need to have stories readily available to tell that reveal the tough situations or even outright mistakes, plus the lessons learned. Interviewers are looking for a candidate who is honest and displays the ability to self-correct and improve, not someone who has no regrets. If you regret turning down that great job opportunity, tell the interviewer how you overcame the mistake in the long run. Thank you! You are now a Monster member—and you'll receive more content in your inbox soon.

By continuing, you agree to Monster's privacy policy , terms of use and use of cookies. Here are some steps you can take to prepare a strong answer to this interview question:. Choosing the right story is important, as you want to explain a situation where only one thing went wrong.

This will help keep the story brief and make it easy to articulate what you learned and what you can do differently next time. A team failure can also be a great choice to share with your interviewer because you share responsibility with others.

Share with the interviewer the story you chose. Keep in mind that the purpose of asking this question is to evaluate how you handle setbacks, so try to rapidly move to the part of the story where you talk about how you managed the failure. You may want to discuss what made the situation challenging and what you did to try to rectify it. Be open about the fact that the situation did not go as planned.

Talk about what you believe went wrong and caused the failure, what you would have done differently and what changes you made moving forward. Your takeaway from the experience could be that you will never make an assumption again, and in the future, you will perform more market research and survey your customer base—even testing the product with a small sample of people before fully investing in a new product or service.

Here are some ways you could answer questions about your past failures:. Because they were a new client and I wanted to impress them with the kind of results we could produce, I assured them we could have it back to them in two weeks. I thought this was doable with multiple writers working on the project, but in the end, it took an extra week, and they were not happy.

I used this experience to be more cautious in managing client expectations.