How To Answer "When Have You Failed Professionally?"

If you get this question, the interviewer is trying to assess your judgment skills and how you deal with adversity. If you say that you have never failed professionally, the interviewer will not believe you. This is a question that EVERYONE should prepare for in advance, as you do not want to try to think up an example on the spot.

Provide an example that shows a situation where something you wanted to do or tried was not successful. A great way to do this is to answer the question in the following way:

1.       What was the situation? Provide a bit of setup.

2.      What did you do or want to do and why? How would this benefit your team or business? Try to avoid talking about how this would benefit you. You want to convey that the most important consideration was not yourself.

3.      What caused you to fail? Provide a brief reason that includes internal and external factors.

4.      And most importantly, what did you learn from this that you now incorporate in your professional life. This is important, as the interview want to know that you can learn and grow from the experience. An example would be, “I learned that I needed to get more people on the project team from the start. In my next project, I did that and had great success.”

If you answer this question smartly, you can really impress the interviewer.