Behavioral

Tell me about a time when you failed badly and what you learned from it?

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Anonymous

4.8Exceptional
During my internship at a local company, I was responsible for managing the company's social media accounts. After my first month, my supervisor provided feedback that my posts were not engaging enough and lacked the brand's voice, resulting in low interaction rates.

Instead of getting discouraged, I took this as a valuable learning opportunity. I asked for a meeting with my supervisor to get more specific feedback and understand what aspects needed improvement. She suggested studying the company's previous successful posts and getting a better grasp of the brand's tone and target audience.

I took her advice and spent time analyzing the company's social media analytics to identify patterns in high-performing posts. I also researched best practices for social media engagement and attended a webinar on effective social media strategies.

With this new knowledge, I revised my content strategy to include more engaging visuals, compelling captions, and interactive elements like polls and questions. Over the next few weeks, I monitored the engagement metrics closely and adjusted my approach as needed.

Gradually, I noticed a significant improvement in likes, comments, and shares on our posts. My supervisor also acknowledged the positive change, and the experience taught me the importance of being receptive to feedback and continuously striving to improve my skills.

Anonymous

4.2Exceptional
I was working with a pharma startup to build a datalake. We had only 8 weeks to both collect requirements and then build the same and my team consisted of me an infrastructure engineer, and a data architect. We did not have direct access to the end users of the datalake, who were the scientists, but had to get requirements through a client manager. This client manager was also not easily accessible as he was travelling a lot. I spent a week with the client manager gathering requirements and working with my team to build the datalake. The data pipelines and datalake structure was completed fast but the infrastructure build was getting delayed. I made a plan of replacing the data architect with an infrastructure architect to boost the infrastructure work and keep everything within budget. I worked this plan with the infrastructure manager, but I was not able to get a go ahead with the client manager who was travelling at that time. When the client manager came in I presented the plan. This was already in action as the data architect was released from the project and the infrastructure architect had started working. The client manager did not approve the plan as he had more data work to do - which was not informed to us. I scheduled a two hour meeting with the client manager to talk about the remaining work, estimate it and plan on how to do this. In this meeting I figured that we had 6-8 days of work remaining. We were already at week five of 8 weeks, so with careful planning, we could get this one done without a cost overrun. I talked with the infrastructure engineer and made sure that he could complete his tasks in one week, which gave me 2 weeks of budget left. I worked with the engagement manager to bring in a data engineer, who was able to scale up in one week. The project completed on time with no schedule or budget over runs. After this project I made sure that risks like access to stakeholders were handled earlier - I ensured that every project after this that there is dedicated communication channel with the stakeholder specifically mentioned in the SoW. I also carved out time in short projets like these in building a rapport quickly not only with the stakeholders, but folks adjacent to the project whom I can contact in exigencies.

Anonymous

4Strong
During my research project, I was tasked with determining the accuracy of our model classifying stack overflow posts. We used the F1 metric to quantify the accuracy. The general process for this was to extract classifications from the model, and then to manually verify the accuracy of those predictions. I completed these steps and presented my findings to the professor. However, I had misunderstood how F1 was calculated, due to a lack of preparation I had made assumptions. I had incorrectly extracted the classifications from the model, and so I had to redo the entire process which set us back a week. The lesson learned was that in order to accomplish a task/meet a goal, it is important to fully understand the steps it takes to reach that goal. Spending more time at this phase compounds into saved time later, since it’s more costly to redo work after an error than correcting a misunderstanding before taking any action.

Anonymous

4Strong
In my early days as Program Manager, I managed a project for one of our main customers. This project consisted in a touch screen device to control a Large format printer for HP. The project had a very tight schedule and I promised to deliver the first EVT units in a certain date.
T: As PM, it was my responsibility to coordinate a cross-functional team to deliver the program on time, within budget, and in line with the scope agreed with our customer.
A: When I started to dive deep into the project and analyze the technical details, I realized that meeting the original delivery timeline was not feasible. So, I immediately met the core team to develop a new and realistic schedule to mitigate the issue. To ensure better alignment, I implemented daily opening and closing meetings with the team to monitor activities and prevent task duplication between cross-functional teams. Two key factors contributed to the milestone delay: a delay in component deliveries and one mistake on my part—I didn’t include in my schedule the LT for one of the Reliability tests required by Engineering before the Ok2ship milestone.
R: I highlighted the issue to my manager and shared with him the root cause of the problem and the new plan. Then, we reached the customer together to explain the situation and kept working together on the new committed schedule.
This experience taught me valuable lessons. Now, I always build buffer time into my project schedules and work more closely with core team members to anticipate potential risks. However, the most important lesson I learned was the value of honesty and proactive communication—raising concerns early is crucial to success.

Anonymous

4Strong
While I was working at Alpha Design Technologies I made a mistake in which I had overlooked and approved a mistake in the design choice by one of the engineers in the team and approved the design document . The problem was that the Engineer had selected a Capacitor for design in the Transmitting section of the Radar which would not withstand high pressures and since it was a defense based product this would not comply with the Military Standards and hence would not comply with the product specifications requested by our customer.
The problem was later rectified as I discussed with the engineer to replace the existing Aluminum electrolytic capacitor with a Tantalum capacitor of same value and size to meet the required product specifications and got the design change approved by higher management.
I learned that I must always take a deep dive into every small detail without assuming anything. I  informed all engineers that if any component details were missing in the datasheets which they felt they required I would reach out to the companies directly to get every single detail required before we could choose any particular component required for design.

Anonymous

4Strong
Certainly, here's an example:

"In my freshman year, I participated in a science fair project with high hopes of winning a prize. Despite investing significant time and effort into my project, it failed to meet the judges' expectations, and I didn't receive any recognition. Initially, I felt disappointed and frustrated by the outcome. However, I chose to view this experience as a learning opportunity rather than dwelling on the failure. I sought feedback from the judges to understand where I went wrong and what I could improve upon in the future. I also reflected on my approach to the project and identified areas where I could have been more thorough or innovative. While it was disheartening not to achieve my desired outcome, the experience taught me valuable lessons in resilience, humility, and the importance of perseverance in the face of failure. It also motivated me to work harder and approach future projects with a more strategic mindset."

Anonymous

3.8Strong
When my team and I deployed the campus network, I neglected to stay updated on the project's progress and didn't have a clear plan of action, leading to delays in project execution. Consequently, I had to work diligently to complete the project within the allotted time, which was stressful. To address this, I now make sure to regularly monitor the project's status and have a clear step-by-step plan in place.

Anonymous

3.6Strong
During my research project, I was tasked with determining the accuracy of our model classifying stack overflow posts. We used the F1 metric to quantify the accuracy. The general process for this was to extract classifications from the model, and then to manually verify the accuracy of those predictions. I completed these steps and presented my findings to the professor. However, I had misunderstood how F1 was calculated, due to a lack of preparation I had made assumptions. I had incorrectly extracted the classifications from the model, and so I had to redo the entire process which set us back a week. The lesson learned was that in order to accomplish a task/meet a goal, it is important to fully understand the steps it takes to reach that goal. Spending more time at this phase compounds into saved time later, since it’s more costly to redo work after an error than correcting a misunderstanding before taking any action.

Anonymous

3.6Strong
When my team and I deployed the campus network, I neglected to stay updated on the project's progress and didn't have a clear plan of action, leading to delays in project execution. Consequently, I had to work diligently to complete the project within the allotted time, which was stressful. To address this, I now make sure to regularly monitor the project's status and have a clear step-by-step plan in place.

Anonymous

3.6Strong
An important mistake I made very early in my experience in product management was my first leadership opportunity with my Consulting Club invention Corps I was leading a team of three and it was fully remote this was very early in the pandemic one of the big failures I made was not asking for help I was a little confused about how I should schedule my project when I should start you know what the core what the template for scheduling was and as a result I took a little bit extra time and I ended up starting our project one week later than we should have this was a huge issue you know I should have reached out to my supervisors or I should have reached out to my project members and ask them what they think as a result we ended up facing a little bit of crunch time towards the middle and end of the project it forced unfortunately my team members and I had to pull a few all-nighters to make sure we hit our deadlines and so it taught me two things one plan plan I now for all my projects that I've had since I have a very detailed notion board full with a kanban board project updates and a more systematic approach to meetings and the second is to just ask for help I know that that's sometimes a little bit scary and it was very scary for me but I've learned that it is so important and honestly isn’t that daunting once you ask. People want to help you and they want you to succeed, especially in yoru own community. 

Anonymous

3.6Strong
At CenterCard, when I was a Director Of Technology, I was managing an Infrastructure for my company. When we set up a K8s infrastruce, we need to install ElasticSearch  - with cost optimization in mind, I had my team install ELK on K8s. What I did not take in mind is my teams ablitiy to support ElasticSerach, when we initially released to Prodcution,we had a outage. Our team took longer than expected time causing bad customer experience.
I had to make a painful choice to switch to managed ELK. I did a retrospective and realized that I failed to access my team strengths. 

Anonymous

3.4Strong
When I was first promoted to a supervisor, I had a responsibility to meet Survey, Productivity and call handling time. I monitored calls and coached the call I observed rather then looking for trends and behaviors.  I also failed to identify if it was a skill or will.  From that failure it led me to review reports at the beginning of my shift, look for trends and behaviors and to focus on coaching measurable action plans. This strategy has helped me to achieve top quartile results each year.

Anonymous

3.3Strong
I remember having failed from badly understand a business requirement. The misunderstanding was discovered only on Preproduction so we lost time re-develop the functionality and redeploy the new release. To rectify the situation, I utilized systematic feedback from the business and incorporate them soon in the development.

Anonymous

2.6Fair
It was when I presented one information to management team and I was asked one question that I did not expect and I do not have information on hand. The meeting was ended with no conclusion due to decision cannot made.

what I learnt from this situation is I must well prepare. For example in the next meeting, I had prepared all related information and tried to think in different dimensions. that meeting went well and conclusion can be made.



Anonymous

2.6Fair
I recall a time when we were assigned a complex task with tight deadline and we were unable to complete the taak within the time range due to lack of proper time management and understanding the severity of the issue.At that time I realized that it is important to manage time and understanding the urgency of the task is very imprtant before working on it

Anonymous

I founded my startup in XXXX, spent the next 3 months interviewing potential customers and users and mapped out user journeys. We got a lot of positive response and most people were keen to see us build the product and eventually use it. So we spent the next 9 months building the product. At the end we weren't able to sell the product for what we hoped for. The mistake we made was to assume that if people want a product, they would be willing to pay for it. Turns out, the problem we were addressing was not urgent enough or important enough. Our learning was that we needed to test for user propensity to pay first before launching a product or service and not getting carried away by good feedback.
  • Tell me about a time when you failed badly and what you learned from it?
  • How did you learn from an experience when you failed badly?
  • How have you learned from a time in which you failed badly?
  • When was the last time you failed badly and what did you learn?
  • How did you learn from failing badly? When did you do this?
  • Would you mind sharing with me a time when you failed badly and what you learned from that experience?
  • When have you failed badly and what have you learned from it?
  • Is there a time when you failed badly? What did you learn from it?
  • If you failed dramatically, what did you learn from the experience?
  • Can you tell me of a time when you failed badly, and what did you learn from it?
  • Tell me about a time you failed badly and what did you learn from it?
  • Can you share an experience where you faced failure and how you overcame it?
  • Tell me about a time when you made a mistake that had a significant impact on your work, and what you learned from it.
  • Can you describe an instance where you failed to meet a goal, and how you responded to that failure?
  • Tell me about a time when you took a risk that didn't pay off, and what you learned from it.
  • Can you discuss a time when you failed at something, and what steps you took to recover from that failure?
  • Tell me about a situation where you faced a setback, and how you handled it.
  • Describe a time when you struggled with a project, and what steps you took to recover from that failure.
  • Can you walk me through a situation where you encountered failure, and how you grew from the experience?
  • Tell me about a time when you received negative feedback, and how you turned it into a learning opportunity.
  • Can you share an example of a failure that ultimately led to personal or professional growth?
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Interview question asked to Full Stack Software Engineers, Software Engineers, Product Managers and other roles interviewing at Gett, Fastly, DigitalOcean and others: Tell me about a time when you failed badly and what you learned from it?.