Usually interview questions have, besides their direct meaning, also hidden content that can tell the employer about your personality. The answer you give may determine the outcome of the entire interview.

The publication Target Jobs has told about one question that can prove to be key. And this question is about what went wrong in your life and what was good. Some people may find it confusing and too personal. But the point is to understand how you deal with setbacks and obstacles. The answer can show your ability to learn from mistakes and show resilience in difficult moments.

Here are some variations of such a question that you may hear in job interviews:

• What is your biggest failure to date and what did you learn from it?
• Describe an instance when something didn't go as you planned. What did you do and what did you learn from it?
• Tell us about a mistake you made.
• How do you deal with failure?

Answering this question can also help a job seeker test their problem-solving skills and assess their own understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.

The publication's experts also gave some advice on how not to answer questions about failure. These choices can undermine your credibility or cause frustration:

• I have never failed/never had a failure;
• Things are so bad in my life I don't even know what to choose;
• I have nothing to do with why things went wrong, it's not my fault.

If you cannot recall a specific failure and describe the situation, it is better to talk about a time when you were frustrated, or when you were on the verge of derailing a major plan, but then things improved thanks to your actions. It's important to keep in mind that interviewers are more interested in what you learned from the experience than the failure itself.

It's better to choose options where you didn't just successfully get out of a difficult situation. It's important that it doesn't happen again in your life. And ideally, when you turned your failure into a success. And in no case put the blame on someone else - it will tell about your emotional immaturity and inability to learn from your own mistakes.

Tips for answering questions about failures and mistakes

Spend more time explaining what you have learned about yourself than describing your own experience. Don't describe how bad it was, but rather identify the reasons for the incident, emphasize what you learned from it and what you do differently now. Explain what actions you took to prevent the same mistake from happening again.

Don't blame. You should not look for excuses for your behavior or actions. Show that you recognize your weaknesses that showed up in this particular situation and focus on what you did to get rid of your own shortcomings or how you have worked on them since then.

Use this uncomfortable issue as a springboard to move on to talking about success. Once you've detailed your failure, you can move on to talking about how the lessons you learned from it have helped you succeed in the future.

Earlier OBOZREVATEL told, what you can not say at the interview, so as not to miss the chance to get a job.

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