In my experience, this is a crappy question because interviewees tend to prep for it. It's way better to ask people about the history of a project they worked on, what challenges they faced, how they overcame it, etc. Stories of failures usually arise from that.
Well, they should anyway. Some people try to dance around their failures, but those are no-hires. Confident candidates don't even think to not talk about their failures because it's all part of what made them successful.
You'd be surprised. The last few candidates I interviewed claimed never to have failed at anything. They also never had a time when they felt unmotivated at work, and had never argued with their manager or cow-orkers, and never made a mistake that affected a production system.
The real value of the question is that it tells you if this is the sort of person who only says what they think you want to hear, not the truth.
I participated in the interview of a dev candidate who had the same answer. "I really can't think of anything I've failed at." This was so implausible that on the basis of that answer alone I voted "no hire"
I wish I could upvote you more than once because that is so true.(I know I COULD if I created a few throwaway accounts but that kind of hacking the system is not for me.) The unfortunate reality of HR is that a lot of them are looking for a polished answer to this question even though what they should be looking for is what you said.
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In my experience, this is a crappy question because interviewees tend to prep for it. It's way better to ask people about the history of a project they worked on, what challenges they faced, how they overcame it, etc. Stories of failures usually arise from that.
Well, they should anyway. Some people try to dance around their failures, but those are no-hires. Confident candidates don't even think to not talk about their failures because it's all part of what made them successful.
You'd be surprised. The last few candidates I interviewed claimed never to have failed at anything. They also never had a time when they felt unmotivated at work, and had never argued with their manager or cow-orkers, and never made a mistake that affected a production system.
The real value of the question is that it tells you if this is the sort of person who only says what they think you want to hear, not the truth.
I participated in the interview of a dev candidate who had the same answer. "I really can't think of anything I've failed at." This was so implausible that on the basis of that answer alone I voted "no hire"
I wish I could upvote you more than once because that is so true.(I know I COULD if I created a few throwaway accounts but that kind of hacking the system is not for me.) The unfortunate reality of HR is that a lot of them are looking for a polished answer to this question even though what they should be looking for is what you said.