Tell us about a mistake you’ve made on the job and what you learned from it.
"Any time I've made a mistake on the job, I've been pretty hard on myself. I've been told by my superiors that berating myself is more harmful than the original mistake. I've learned from those conversations. I've learned to improve my systems to ensure I don't miss any steps or repeat those mistakes. I've also learned to shift my attitude to look at each mistake as an opportunity to improve the way I do things, learn from those lessons and enhance my output and quality of work. Now I perform with far fewer mistakes. One time, I spent several days implementing some new systems to increase the quantity of my work. When I first put the system into practice, I was over-eager to turn my work in. I should've been more thorough in reviewing my work and not taken my new systems for granted. I met the deadline, but my work was barely acceptable. I pride myself on padding the job and turning in the finest quality. This work didn't meet my standard. I shouldn't have rushed the work and should have given myself a little more breathing room. I've since fine-tuned my systems and now provide a higher output of material that meets my quality standards. Live and learn."
This question reveals whether you take ownership of your mistakes and setbacks and what you learn from them. Your answer will inform them whether you deflect blame, repeat the same errors, or become a more difficult member of the team to work with. Feeling fear of judgment for making a mistake is human. How one deals with and remedies a mistake comes down to exercising good judgment and knowing when asking for help is appropriate. Consider the needs of your team. When providing your example, explain the reasoning behind the course of action you took.
The assessment vendor will study your performance for signs of discomfort or dishonesty. Verbal cues they'll analyze to identify if you're exaggerating or not being completely honest include repeating a question before answering, speaking in sentence fragments, displaying a change in speech pattern, irregular speech, and rising and falling tone. When your words don't match your gestures, your gestures will be seen as the truth. So maintain eye contact and confident body language, be comfortable, and speak from the heart.
Take into consideration this advice, and recommended values, extracted from their business principles; "Always strive for improvement and have the ability to drive change - make a list and get it done. Act in a thoughtful, coordinated way - not in haste or in isolation. Measure performance with a detailed, balanced scorecard. Monitor, track and report the right things the right way, and fix ineffective reporting."
Community answers are written by other candidates practicing this set. Reading how others frame the same question is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.
Anonymous Answer
First off, it can be very embarrassing, but it is important to address it right away. I remember at MOLT, I persuaded the group not to bid on a certain property and to save our investment on another. While we still made money on the latter investment, we found the first would have been a cheaper price and a higher ROI in general. I learned to be more careful in my judgments and to ask people for theirs before hastily assigning to my ideas.
Marcie's Feedback
Good job! The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and it sounds like you did in this case. Can you delve even deeper into what you learned here? Why did you think the group shouldn't bid on that property? What was your reasoning? How were your assumptions incorrect? The more details you can add here, the better!
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