I was once in a very time-pressured scenario where I had to execute a trade for a client, but I had to choose between negotiating the bank charges lower for the client or accept the bank charges proposed by the bank and trade at that level to take advantage of the advantageous market levels. I was not so comfortable with the bank charges proposed by the bank - from my experience, I knew the bank could go lower and I wanted to leverage my relationship to save my client more money by lowering the charges. However, in doing so, after a few hours of negotiating with the bank, the market had moved against the client. While I did manage to negotiate lower charges for the client, the win from the lower charges was all but wiped out by higher market levels. While net, net, the client still benefitted from the slightly lower negotiated price, the client wasn't happy. There was a lack of proper communication between the client and the bank as the process was ongoing, primarily because the negotiation was undergoing with 2 banks at the same time. All in all, mu learnings from this experience were that before trading, I would always give the client a heads up, letting them know that market had moved against them - even though, in this scenario, client gave the order to proceed ASAP. I tried to wrap up transaction as quickly as possible, thinking that there was no time to give heads up to client that market had moved against them so I proceeded. This was my failure, after which I made it clear that going forward I would always give heads up to the client (regardless of their order) of the market levels and price from bank at that time.

Bei einer sehr schwierigen Klausur bin ich gescheitert, indem ich ohne Hintergrundwissen Themen ausgelassen habe beim lernen und gehofft habe, sie kamen nicht dran.

Once upon a time, due to the hectic schedule of my campus, I missed the deadline for a campaign of Unilever.

As an intern, I think it is important for our team and for the brand of our product, so I should take measure to fix it. Therefore, I did 3 things.

Firstly, I measured my current available resources to see if there were any resources I can use to quickly help me.

Secondly, I told the truth to my colleague and my line manager, giving them my idea about how to solve this problem and wish them to help me.

Thirdly, I did the plan B with several colleague, and worked overtime.

Finally we got things done and the campaign could be carried as usual.

From this experience, I think it is essential to prepare the plan B in advance, and consider the risk of different situation. More importantly, time management are crucial and we should prioritize our multiple tasks.

(editiert)

There was a time that personally felt like a failure although the outcome of the task itself was successful. I was at college and I had a very important and complex team project to deliver. Two of my team mates were brilliant, competitive and extremely prepared. They basically decided to pull all the project by themselves, with all nighters and personal extra tasks. The rest of the team was basically cut off and was left doing the simple stuff. Going back to the time, I realized I allowed to be excluded because I was very busy with many other courses and deliveries and I honestly found free-riding useful for me once (although it is something that I never inteded to do nor I support doing). At the end, we got the top mark but for me it felt like a total failure. Lesson learned: if you are not the sharpest tool in the box, you can always find your way to give your best for the team and the project. Piggybacking other people's work is wrong even if allowed by the others!

Dear A,

The point of this question is to test you on:

• How you can analyze your past experience

• How you can admit your mistakes

•How honest person you are (don't try to invent smth. It's very visible from the side)

• How you can conclusions for the future

Take this points as a guide to think about your own story about failure.

Best,

André

Hello!

It´s really easy as an interviewer to tell when someone is lying, so just don´t. Tell something honest -but for sure don´t pick the biggest mistake of your life!-.

What is being tested here is your ability to self-reflect, not how big you can mess up ;)

Hope it helps!

Clara

the first failure that comes to mind was my inability to get my previous academic department to get on-board re: seeing a lack of diversity and inclusion in our dept. While the issue was glaringly obvious to me anecdotally and from personal experience, the faculty i was working with was extremely data-driven and fact-motivated. to solve the problem in our dept, many people believed that there were insurmountable barriers because it was seen as a field-wide problem. by presenting more evidence from other academic sources to make the case that there ARE reasons why we should be proactive in this realm, and there ARE ways that we could be, i may have been able to persuade enough of the faculty to get on board and drive dept'mental change.

Das Projekt zum Aufsetzen eines internen Prozesses zum Tracken von Marketingsondermaßnahmen, schlug weite Kreise, da das Reporting verschiedener Zuständigkeiten im vorhinein nicht stringent aufgesetzt war. So viel es schwer, die KPI's für die Vertriebsleiter auszuarbeiten.

Beginning of my study when I choose the environment I was not sure about

Hi Anonymous,

The real question here is how do you handle failure, and show-case that on a specific example of your past.

In some respect you are allowed to 'fail' often, since many things you are doing are unchartered territories, and you need to learn along the way, based on your introspection and also feedback received.

And feedback is a crucial point - mostly uncomfortable, but you will receive a lot from it. Even if it sometimes hurts - take it as it is and act upon it, it's your chance to grow and reach the next level.

So ultimately, demonstrate on what went not according to your realistic expections, what's your reflection on that and ideally how you did that better the next time (i.e. also implementing the feedback and/or introspection from previous time).

Hope this helps - if so, please be so kind and give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button!

Robert

Basically, what they want to understand is not what you're bad at but rather how do you deal with a situation that doesn't go your way. 

They're rather more interested in how you then conduct a sort of post-mortem analysis to understand what didn't go well, why and what you did about it. 

So any example that is able to illustrate that should work.

Best,
Cristian

On a monopolistic supplier I did not manage to get immediate result based on facts and figures but was able to develop a new supplier within time and create competition.

Frequently! success doesn't come without failure.  I personally challenge myself to fail. Failure makes us learn, failure makes us grow and failure tells us a lot about ourselves. Do we get back up, do we crawl or do we lay there waiting for someone to lift us up. 

The client presentation was based on generic inspirations. I forgot the uniqueness we offer and did not consult with previous account managers.

Just recentely I failed at an application process. It was in February/March before I decided to apply at your company. It was for the most valueable company of the world for their global Employee Excperience department in London. I made it to the last stage, the Assessment day. Out of 5600 applicant I got to the last 5, but I didn't make it, someone else got the position. But it helped me so much. I now know that I want to live in Munich and that I should apply there. Furthermore, I see myself in consulting instead of one specific company. 

What is the most important thing: I learned again a lot about myself in application processes. Sometimes I'm too fast with my thoughts and therefore they get unstructured. I want to improve that and I am working on it a lot. 

I ve got kicked from a project

Felt bad

sports

1. De Kleine Consultant kwetsbaarheid

Situatie: Na m'n eerste ronde bij DKC wilde ik graag PM worden. Dit was niet gelukt, omdat mensen aangaven dat ik nog niet benaderbaar genoeg was. Het was een beeld dat ik in eerste instantie niet herkende, omdat ik goed ben in relaties opbouwen en mensen snel vertrouw.

Actie: Maar in groepen praatte ik over ervaringen bij Accenture, business courses, hardloop record of welke positieve bevindingen ik had. Hierdoor vonden mensen het lastig om zich open te stellen naar mij. Wat als PM wel heel belangrijk is.

Resultaat:  Hierdoor dat als ontwikkeldoel genomen, sneller dingen gedeeld waar ik tegenaanloop of onzeker over ben, hierdoor merkte ik ook dat consultants in m'n volgende rol sneller dingen met me deelde.

Reflecteer: Enorm waardevol, want door perfectie na te streven als individu is dat soms nadelig voor het team. Hierdoor tot inzicht gekomen dat zowel ik me beter kan ontwikkelen door te delen waar ik meezit als andere te kunnen helpen, omdat ze zich openstellen naar mij.

2. Verkeerde studiekeuze

Situatie:  Bestuurskunde een foute studiekeuze, waardoor mijn resultaten ook ondermaats waren voor wat ik wilde behalen.

Actie: Hierdoor op zoek gegaan naar mezelf door boeken te lezen. Onder andere '7 habits of highly effective people'. Dit boek gaan gebruiken als een handboek om effectiever te zijn in prioritering van taken, maar ook relaties.
Daarnaast ook hypothese-gedreven veel dingen naast m'n studie gaan doen om erachter te komen wat mij wel motiveert. Hoge ambtenaren via bestuursfuncties, minor informatica, consultancy-ervaring via Accenture, DKC en als freelance consultant.

Resultaat: Dat je jezelf nooit moet vastpinnen op bepaalde doelen, maar moet focussen op proactiviteit ("be proactive: circle of concern and influence") en prioritisering ("first things first: eisenhower matrix" & "begin with the end in mind: visualisatie"). Je moet werken met verschillende hypotheses moet werken om te kijken wat het best bij je past. Verwachtingen moet je testen in plaats van managen.

Reflectie: Dit heeft me veel gegeven. Zowel professioneel om te leren wat ik wel/ niet/ delegeren of uitstellen. Als in hoe ik tijd investeer in relaties.
 

3. Accenture communicatie

Situatie: Ik werkte in een team van event managers en consultants om een innovatie evenement voor c-level executives af te spreken.
Taak: Voor de juiste deliverables was ik afhankelijk van een event manager die ik rond 6 uur naar huis zag lopen.
Actie: Toen ben ik naar haar toe gelopen en was ik te direct in mijn communicatie. Uiteindelijk hebben we de situatie die avond nog opgelost, maar merkte ik daarna dat onze relatie beschadigd was. Daarna heb ik nog mijn excuses aangeboden en door te vragen haar te kunnen helpen op andere momenten de relatie te verbeteren. 

Resultaat: Daarnaast heb ik communicatie ook altijd als één van mijn ontwikkelingsdoelen gehouden. Hierdoor heb ik over mezelf geleerd dat ik over het algemeen mensgericht ben, maar in stressvolle situaties doelgericht wordt. Ik probeer dit soort situaties tegenwoordig op te vangen door 2 dingen te doen: altijd op de juiste manier vragen stellen om miscommunicatie te voorkomen & in stressvolle situaties mensen sneller één-op-één te nemen. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood"

testtest

When I gave feedback

During the preparation of my bachelor's degree thesis, I started to see possible future universities to continue my study. I had identified a well known university in my country which requires a good level of english, because all courses are erogated in this language.

I went with a friend of mine to an english private school in my hometown, where we asked for a fast course of 2 months to take a good results in the IELTS Test. The teacher asked us to ask the this specific request directly in english and have a small conversation. We both failed and she laughed at us. Instead, a collague of her asked us our motivation, and the effort that we would have put to properly study for the certification. We conviced him to take us as students, and we passed 2 months only practicing english everyday. At the end, I and my friend passed the exam and we both enrolled in the university that we picked

(editiert)

When I joined the Telecom start-up as a software intern, I was given a task to establish communication between the two set hard phones through means of software within 4 weeks of time. That was a huge task for me because I came from a computer science background and my final year project was into application development and this task was mostly related to firmware. I started reading user manuals given by the vendor and started to understand the high-level picture. I spend a lot of time during weekends building and validating the product while interacting with the various hardware teams to understand the logic of communication between the hardware and software. Finally, in 4 weeks, I was able to build a prototype that demonstrated the communication between the phones. The client was not happy with the prototype as it didnt meet his needs. That was the time I felt failed to meet the expectations. But I talked to the client and made him agreed to one more week and I was able to completely integrate the systems and deliver the project. Even though that was a failure I was able to learn the importance of timeliness, prioritization, working with teams also got domain knowledge.

The last time I failed was when I had to present my homework for a course of Advanced Macroeconomics and I failed in successfully completing the task so all my mistakes were discussed out loud infront of the whole class. After the first embaressment I started to see all the constructive critic and learned alot for my next homework.

was managing a project where a new client wanted a large number of unique product descriptions written to improve the SEO ranking of their site. Because they were a new client and I wanted to impress them with the kind of results we could produce, I assured them we could have it back to them in two weeks. I thought this was doable with multiple writers working on the project, but in the end, it took an extra week, and they were not happy.

We apologized and reassured them that the mistake wouldn’t happen again. I realized that it’s far better to under-promise and over-deliver. The client isn’t going to be upset when you are clear about what the timeline is from the beginning. Problems arise when you can’t meet promised deadlines. I used this experience to be more cautious in managing client expectations. For the next client project I worked on, I made sure to include extra time for unforeseen circumstances and told them we would deliver in four weeks. We delivered in three, and they couldn’t have been more thrilled.

submitted a paper that got rejected

Nope never

I misevaluated a business I joined and the result was bad in many ways: financially and personally.

When I lost my business because of poor supervision

At my job there were 2 sides for the business. I was still new and was only handling 1 part but out of curiosity i was kind of learning what the other team does if I was finishing my tasks before schedule. We once had a project to submit and my colleague(also new and from the other team) was telling me how she was doing her task and I realized that she was doing something wrong and I told her this might not be the way she should do it. She replied in a rude manner and I deicided to end the discussion however I didn't know if I should tell my supervisor indirectly that she might be doing something wrong and I didn't. Long story short the data was wrong and we had to stay overtime for 2-3 days to fix the problem. What I have learned is that I shouldve asked my supervisor on how the task should be done so that at least we can have team discussion about it instead of letting my colleague continue with her mistake.

I had a few days to prepare for an exam in University, and I tried to do it on my own, despite the fact that there were group sessions taking place in order to better help students with the same. Safe to say, I didn't get the result I was expecting (far from it actually). Valuable lesson learned...

i played Soccer for 10Years with the Dream to be a Professional Footballplayer one timer, but i failed on that one.

Anfangs meiner Tätigkeit in einer kleinen Consulting Firma bestand meine Aufgabe darin, Businesspläne zu schreiben. Bis auf das im Stuidum erlernte Wissen hatte ich bislang noch keine Erfahrungen. Aus diesem Grund waren die ersten beiden Businesspläne sehr bescheiden.

In Rücksprache mit meinem Vorgesetzten überlegte ich mir eine Herangehensweise und nahm die Tipps meines Vorgesetzten an um möglichst schnell Wissen aufzubauen. Durch meine mir selbst definierte Struktur konnte ich in der Folge wesentlich einfacher das Businessmodel begreifen und entsprechend meine Arbeit verbessern. Als Folge dessen habe ich die Qualität der Businesspläne verbessert und durfte in der Folge eigenständig den Kunden betreuen.

I failed in getting the budget in 2019 due to bad market and not managing to have sales teams in the digital mission behind me.

This was during my stint as Shift in charge at my previous work experience. Our Oil and gas project is in the testing phase. In the testing phase, we check for the presence of hydrocarbon. The preliminary results showed that the chance on hydrocarbon is quite low. My fellow experienced shift in charges has advised me to stop further testing. However, I went ahead for secondary testing and found that the results were against my expectations. This was my biggest failure as I wasted companies’ resources of time and money

The learnings I got from this experience is that

• Give attention to the advice of experienced people.
• It is better to have a team consensus while taking any decision

KL

w

I have a consulting interview after 2 days can someone pls review my answer?

I made a huge mistake, when I was interning with a firm as a content writer and developer, where I was responsible for creating content as well as work towards search engine optimization. So, during my second week of internship, I was still in the learning phase, I had already delivered a few successful articles and my manager was really happy with it. So, she asked me whether I could complete 3 new articles within the next 2 days and also work with SEO optimization. And my manager had a target that her boss had set for her and she wanted this work done within 2 days by hook or by crook. Without analysing the depth of the situation, I thought it would be doable and would make a good impression but that’s where I made a mistake. I did not take into consideration the unforeseeable events that I might have to face and I did face on such problem, I got a viral fever. I was advised bed rest, but I had to complete my work. Being an intern, I didn’t think it would be right on my part to leave the work midway even though I was sick. I tried my best to write the 3 articles but the most important part was the SEO optimization as she trusted me with that. And SEO optimization has a lot of minute details that needed to be kept in mind so somehow, I managed to submit my work. But I did not expect the consequences to be so bad. The next day I received a call from my manager and she was so angered it scared me. Maybe she was too pressured by her superior. She told me a lot of things that hit me hard, she went to the extent of saying that she didn’t need such interns who made false promises. That really hit me hard, although I was sick, I did not think giving that excuse for the lack of delivering a perfect work. It was my mistake in the first place, to have agreed to such an unrealistic deadline without weighing out all the factors. This has been one of my first big failures and also an eye opener. But unless you fail at something you won’t know what it takes to be successful, this is the biggest lesson I received from this incident. Now, whenever there is a work, I need to get done, I always think about it realistically and try not make false promises because in this situation, because in this situation, had I told her that 2 days is too less to complete so much work, she wouldn’t have expectations at all right. After that day, I followed this theory and by the end of my 2 months internship, I received a freelance offer for them. So, I consider this failure of mine as a big learning lesson.

(editiert)

I failed in a test during my entrance to engineering, by geetting negative total score in a paper of 360.

I made my Abitur 2011 and wanted to study business administration, but i didn't got a playce to study. I was really upset and worked 10 months in a production industry. I learned that, I have to do something and get better, by getting better marks in school e.g., to get a great job and a playce to study. Also i never ever want to do a job which i didn't interested in. You have no fun doing that and don't learn something.

today

My first year working as an expat in France was a very tough time. I was trying to achieve too much in a very short time and had a burn-out after 10 months. Then I realized it is not realistic to achieve everything and I had to prioritize and drop a few tasks. After I ask myself what do I want the most from the expat experience, I focus on the important stuff and the work was much smoother later.

I managing the innovation cell of my current consulting company.
Wilst I was organising a global event including worldwide associates,we decided with my team to organise a live meeting. It was supposed to allow foreign offices to attend the meeting remotely.
However, during the live, the sound was not working properly, which provokes reduced attendance rate during the show.

As we has some local contacts, we've launched a crisis call with them, in order to react and resolve the issue asap.
We choose to make a remote local animation, adapting the objective.
From a global presentation event, we turned into what such a global event about innovation could bring for your local consulting activities.

This was finally worth a failure, but a very creative workshop creating high added-value for all our offices.

Lesson learned: Be prepared but as life is a live, get a high supporting team, define in advance clear outputs, in short term but also in the long-run, in order to adapt a situation to the target and react together.

(editiert)

yesterday

I launched an innovative product in my city named " Copteroom"

The idea was to let people play with quadrocopters indoor.

Even if I dot multiple people coming to play. after a peak, I got a list of problems:

- Low customer rate of the mall

- the high breaking point of parts

- ruined my value proposition with cupon

end many minor things that led to close the company.

However these real-life mistakes gave me a chance to avoid the same things in future projects.

The times I failed. The project that I was doing my internship on developing an application. It was my first experience to work in this type of project and my manager was not a PM or developer. So he did not have really experience in this field. I failed many times during this experiece, it was test and trial approach. I failed learnt from the experience and improved myself. For exemple, we discussed with an internal team during 3 months about the project and I realized the was not skilled, so we lost 4 months on project. Then, called a bid and choosed a more skilled team that realized the project within 5 months.

(editiert)

During my research, I was targeting to get a publication in IEEE conference. I performed my analysis and was excited finding the expected results with my algorithm. However, when I applied for that conference my paper got rejected. It was the lowest point in my research career as I was confident about my work. However, I realized it was a learning point and I can improve my work and achieve the desired with better outcome. Finally, after 3 months I got an acceptance for that topic.

did not get an A

d

A time I failed was during my student job at a power and gas trading company, where I worked as a gas scheduler managing the operations of the gas trading department. The job contained 40 different tasks with very tight deadlines that I was supposed to solve during each nine-hour shift. In the first month, I struggled to remember how to solve various tasks. The way they usually instructed new joiners did not work out for me. My supervisor was not satisfied with my performance. What I did to solve the situation was to go the extra mile. I meticulously wrote down a detailed description of all 40 tasks and learned them by heart before going to bed. During the second month, I made great progress and did not rely on any help any longer. To avoid running into such a situation again, I promised myself I will work painstakingly from the start.

N/A

In managing clients, sometimes things can be going so well that you let the well-oiled machines run themselves and not check in or anticipate problems too much. This has been the case when a client kept spending and things were going well until they suddenly weren't, because I forgot to be alertt and anticipate the innovations of competitors. In as much as tthe client's objective is to meed demand of their customers, it's important to consanly assess the evolving trends and needs that might influence the business, perhaps not today but in the near future.

When I started my phd project, I realized quickly that the relationship between all the parameters involved was to complex to evaluate by hand. So I came up with a procedure to automize to evaluation process, so that at the end I was able to illucidate all interesting relationship and at the end successfully develope a new scientific method.

college

When I was given the responsibility to head informal events at a cultural event in our university, I failed miserably. We tried a new line of events which were never before conducted in the cultural fest in the history of the university and we named all of these events in native languages, also the events were open for the whole duration of the festival.

The results were underwhelming, the crowd didn't take interest in the events, due to lack of time-bound informal events, the crowd was scattered and this also led to shortage of volunteers.

We learned a lot from this. The same set of events were tried again the next year but with time limitations and common names and better publicity, and they were actually a hit.

Driving licence

Did not look at the impacts of changes downstream. The mistake was caught at testing. Had to extend implementation by a day

Good

At the beginning of my studies I failed an exam in chemistry. On my second try I also failed and I had to study a year longer to get a new chance. I realized that the way I was learning wasn't effective anymore to face the challanges of my studys and i started to adapt new learning-techniques. I continued studying and the new learning-techniques started to pay out.

I once fall down, but staying up made me even a safer hold.

during my last interviw in a private owned company

sadfgh

When I was in a student organization, we organized with 3 people an event. We all put a lot of effort into it, but in the end, the number of people that showed up was really disappointing. After this event, we sat together as a team and tried to think about where the problem lied. After that meeting, we made a clear to-do list with dates for future events and recommended that there is always 1 "project manager" that is responsible that everything on this list happens, so that we don't lose track of the overview.

(editiert)

jbslfnñjkl

This might sound too simple but when I was in high school we had to run a 12 min run and the more we ran, the better the grade. I was one of the slowest and I always got a C, meanwhile all my friends got As and it was easy for them. This run was every year in high school so I started practising 1-2 weeks before the run and I started to become better. My last run was an A. For some reasons it really upset me that I was so much slower than everyone else. Now I am a runner and I love it. Also Im faster than all my friends

On my first tournament in kick-boxing, second fight I got knocked out in the first round.

test

I failed in confronting my teammates in the final year project and hence I had to go back and check everything from zero

I dont know the answer to this