Tell me about a time when you failed on the job. How did you overcome the failure and what did you learn from that situation that you can bring to Uber?
Uber prides itself on making bold bets, where the organization knows that sometimes people fail and that failure makes them smarter. They are firm believers that after a failure, they get back up and make the next big bet. Knowing this heading into your interview, your interviewer ideally wants to hear about a time that you took a risk in your job and fell flat on your face. While they'll be interested to hear about the failure itself, they'll mainly be looking to hear how you picked yourself up, learned from the situation, and moved forward to success from there. Make sure that the example you discuss clearly demonstrates all of these things.
"I failed to meet an important deadline in my first job out of college because I didn't have experience in prioritizing a large workload properly. I kept letting other menial tasks get in the way rather than focusing on finishing the project. That missed opportunity helped me learn how to manage my time wisely by setting reasonable goals and reminders on my calendar. This technique still helps me to this day in managing my time more effectively."
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
In my current job, I manage an index that needs certain operations daily. These are very repetitive and tedious. So, I decided to make myself a tool within Excel VBA to automate the tasks and save some time every day. However, one day a special thing that does not occur very often happened. Of course, my tool was not prepared for that and the wrong value was published. We call that an incident. I realized I had overlooked the special situation and I found its description in the index's documentation. Ever since I have been a lot more careful when programming a new tool. I review all documentation carefully and make sure all scenarios are accounted for before implementing.
Marcie's Feedback
The interviewer will be pleased that you thought of a quicker, automated way to accomplish the tedious task. It sounds like you learned a valuable lesson about making sure any tool or process you create anticipates even unusual circumstances. How will this lesson benefit you at Uber in particular?
