When have you failed and what did you learn from it?
Many times, a person might feel the fear of being judged for a mistake they've made. How they confront their fear, and the situation, is the true test of their character. So your interviewer wants to ensure the ideal candidate has a strong sense of self-accountability and exhibits the ability to learn from their setbacks. How you answer will help them evaluate how you handle disappointment and what you learn from such experiences, if you take responsibility for your own actions, inactions, and limitations, and exhibit self-awareness, as to what your attitude towards life looks like. Making mistakes is human. How we deal with and remedy a mistake comes down to exercising good judgment and knowing when asking for help is appropriate.
Relay a positive experience, detailing the situation, framing the setback, how you dealt with it, and what you learned along the way, providing your lens of what failure looks like. Detail what you would've done differently and how you avoided repeating it.
"I inherited the workload of an employee that was underperforming, a lot, and was let go. It was overwhelming. I suffered from task paralysis and had trouble getting started. Long ago, a mentor suggested in situations like this I always tackle the biggest aspect of an overwhelming project first, since that was what I felt most daunted by. It was good general advice, and I listened to it. However, in this instance, I should have taken a different approach. I lost focus on the priorities of the project, where instead of focussing on the tasks one by one, I should have looked more closely at the broader view of the problem at hand. As a result, I didn't manage my time well and should have approached the project differently. I missed that target, but never made the mistake again."
Unlock all 30 Tesla questions
Unlock insider responses for Tesla's competitive internship selection process.
Get Started