How to answer "What's the biggest mistake you've made on the job?"

How do you answer interview questions about your mistakes? This post is the fourth in a series of excerpts from my new book, Get That Job! The Quick and Complete Guide to a Winning Job Interview.

What's behind this interview question?

The intention here is to see whether you are open to admitting, taking responsibility for and learning from your mistakes. No one wants employees who will sweep their mistakes under the rug or blame them on others. They also want to hear that you clean up after yourself where possible, going the extra mile to make things right.

Here's an example:

"On a software project I managed, a certain manager didn't come to the regular meetings until the final one where everyone was supposed to sign off. There, at the last minute, he objected to a great new feature the team was excited about. Later I realized how I could have countered that objection, but at the time it caught me by surprise, I didn't make a good case for it, and the feature was left off.

"What I learned for the future was to always make sure the key stakeholders are involved early, and that's what I've done since then. Anyway, I worked hard to ensure that the new feature would be in the next release – and it was!"

What other interview questions are you concerned about?

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