How do you answer 'Describe your most significant success and failure in the last two years' in a job interview?

Answer 1

When i feel dissappointed i usually go do something i like. but usually it depends on what im dissapointed in. For example if im dissapointed in myself. i usually try again for whatever i dissapointed myself for. If it was not getting a date with someone. I'll try again for something better. If i get a date with someone better. It makes me feel like it wasn't my fault for getting one the first time. Now if i was dissapointed in someone else. id have a talk with that person or if they won't talk to you then they have bigger problems. Usually doing something i love to do helps me get over my dissapointment.

Disappointment is nothing more than expectations not meeting your demands. I had to understand why I had such a high expectation level. Once I did understand this, I no-longer became disappointed and anything positive that cam about was a plus. If you don't expect it, it becomes a plus.

Answer 2

Answer

First, NEVER use the word failed.

Tell the interviewer what you LEARNED from the situation and how it taught you how to deal with the same (or similar) situation should it occur again.

Show that you accepted your "failure" as a part of life and a learning experience. DO NOT show that you are beating yourself up over it. Show that you learned from it and moved on.

~ T

the answer of this question is not what is written above.

Answer 3

IF AN EMPLOYER WAS ASKING ME THIS WOULD SAY I DONT THINK THAT THERE WAS EVER A TIME WHEN MY RESULTS DIDNT REACH MY COMPANYS EXPECTATIONS HOWEVER THERE WERE TIMES WHEN MY IDEA ON HOW TO GET RESULTS DIDNT MATCH THE COMPANYS PHILOSOPHY ON HOW TO ACHIEVE RESULTS. AND I HAD TO LEARN AND GAIN MATURITY TO REALIZE THAT MY WAY IS NOT ALWAYS THE BEST WAY AND THAT WHEN YOUR IN A TEAM SITUATION ITS MORE IMPORTANT TO JUST GET THE JOB DONE AND ACHIEVE THE BEST POSSIBLE RESULTS WHATEVER THE ROAD TO THAT MAY BE IS NOT SO MUCH AS IMPORTANT. If I was interviewing you and you told me there was never a time when your results didn't reach your company's expectations I would hire someone else--there is always a time when your results won't meet the company's expectations, and employers know this. The trick is to make them meet expectations almost all the time.

My answer would be "when my company's expectations were not physically or legally attainable." I drive a truck that goes 60mph. I have been given assignments to drive 330 miles in four hours. You can only drive 330 miles in four hours if you can drive 83mph. In most places it's not legal to drive 83mph, and the truck won't go that fast anyway. If the person conducting the interview has ever held a commercial driver's license he will understand and accept that answer, because dispatchers are famous for giving you loads like that. But when I told the dispatcher I needed more time, he gave me six hours and I pulled the load in 5.5 hours, so they were happy.

Maybe you're a sales person and you sell frozen food. Your boss gave you the job of selling six cases of liver sausage every week. Liver sausage is popular in parts of the South and sales people there are selling six cases a week, but you are in New Hampshire where people do not like to eat liver sausage. Is it your fault people won't buy your quota of liver sausage? No, because it's not a product in New Hampshire. In this case you could also mention that when you told your boss people were asking for pork breakfast links and got the liver sausage taken off your truck, you sold 10 cases of a more-profitable sausage every week and increased the company's revenues.

An interviewer knows you won't always meet expectations; she also knows that when it happens it should be because of external forces, not because you were disorganized or lazy. Telling me you needed four hours instead of three to sort all the pallets into stacks because you decided to take a lot of smoke breaks is not going to impress me, but if you needed four hours because the forklift battery died and it took two hours to get a new one, that's great--with a good battery at the start you would have been done in two hours.

Answer 4

ANSWER

success is not measured by the amount of money that you have earned ...real success is measured by how much you have matured in terms of personal development in the past years.. You can also measure your success by counting your blessings, skills and knowledge that you have acquired from the past years or from previous jobs and how well you have wielded these skills and how were they able to help you cope up with everyday living.

Failure.....think of things that you have failed in but be carefull in giving out facts or ideas that may give a bad impression about your personality and then mention about the solutions you made up to rise from this failure and made you accept the challenge to overcome this obstacle or failure.

JASON DELA LUNAjeqq214@Yahoo.com

Answer 5

Choose something that you can honestly say you tried your best at but that did not work out anyway, and be ready to say what you learned from it. But avoid saying it wasn't your fault or blaming someone else for the failure.

An interviewer who asks this question is probably looking for what your attitude was about the failure (do you take responsibility for it or do you try to make someone else look bad?) and how you turned it into a learning experience so you don't have to repeat it.

If you haven't been responsible for work projects that had an opportunity to fail, you can pick something from life or from a situation that resembles a job, such as a school or club experience.

Answer 6

In a job interview the best answer is this question is honesty. If you have missed a deadline talk about it and the details and take ownership of you actions, bosses are not looking for someone who places blame. If you have never missed a deadline explain that to them and why it is important to you to always meet deadlines.