Ask HN: How to deal with negative "tell me about a time" interview questions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to deal with negative "tell me about a time" interview questions?

30 pointspinewurst32 comments

I have interviews next week that I'm very nervous about. I'm excited about the job and know I can do it well. However, I know for a fact that it'll be a very long day of "tell me about a time when you failed" and "what's the worst thing your previous manager would say about you". After a day of that, it'll take a while to recover from the bad feelings, especially if the result is the usual ghosting.

Any advice how to deal best with this awfulness?

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The goal is for you to tell them what you did and learned about from that negative experience.

tell me about a time when you failed.

I was asked if I could do ABC with a certain amount of time, and I said sure I would get it done, I was sure of A and C but I couldn't figure out B. so I set out to figure out B, I asked for help and no one knew how to solve B, so I went through XYZ process to figure out B, it took longer than I thought, I communicate that I would miss the deadline, I finally figured out B after taking a crash course, but I missed the deadline and was pretty embarrassed by that. I learned that I shouldn't promise to deliver on a hard deadline when there are unknowns, however to my surprise, the client was understanding since I communicated ahead of time that I might ship late. I also learned to keep an open communication and communicate progress and expectations while working on something.

These questions are not traps, they are asked to extract your experience. It's also a good way to demonstrate your communication skills through story telling, it needs to be succinct.

I’m a bit surprised at the answers you are getting here. I think this touches on two subjects so I’ll try to give two answers.

First of all, when asked about a time when, it’s perfectly normal to spend some time to think about it. I always give them a truthful answer and God knows I have a lot previous fails and / or managerial arguments on my plate.

Seriously, “my old manager thought I was a dumb idiot with attitude issues” (hint: not true! or maybe it is).

What does this even tell them? That you’re honest (probably) and either you’re a dumb idiot with attitude issues or your manager was not a nice person.

Do they act on the assumption that your manager was right? This says a lot more about them than about you.

Remember, it’s a two sided interview. If you can’t be honest, if they rush to conclusions, if they put you on the spot, you’ll be in for a frustrating employment.

Secondly, about your dealing with the awfulnes of past deeds, I’ll just copy paste a nice little story here:

> A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side.

> The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman.

> Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his journey.

> The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them.

> Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”

> The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”

> why are you still carrying?

For me, it is because of the serious concern that I'm going to repeat my errors until I find a solution for how to avoid them... and for some longstanding personal problems I don't know how to start finding a solution.

Practice. You're telling a story, it can be prepared, you don't have to relive it every time.

Understand why they're asking. It's easy to talk about your success, and to idealize how we got to an outcome, but in reality it's more like: 1) search for something on StackOverflow, 2) figure out you should be searching for different terms, 3) try some off-the-shelf software recommended in a buried comment, 4) fail to compile it from source, 5) try a buried answer in a related question; etc. Those are all "failures" in that you weren't born knowing the correct answer, and being able to describe how you got to an outcome fully is valuable.

Ask them the value they're getting so you can characterize the experience appropriately. We were hiring a senior designer to work with a particularly internally contentious product and development team. We were concerned they hadn't discussed any grit during the interview process, only happy paths. We call them up and say, tell us about a time you fought with someone and lost. They respond, "uh, am I going to have to actually fight people in this job?" No, your PM might be a real pain in the ass and we can't seem to get them replaced so you're going to have to stick up for yourself, and we'd like to hear about a time you did that and it still didn't work out for you, and what happened next. And, they did, and we hired them, and they worked out well.

props to you for being honest with the candidate about what they should expect and letting them know that your team wanted to hire someone that would succeed in the role, knowing it's particular challenges.

Take a queue from politicians. Use the opportunity to tell one of your stories/talking points. You should have at least 3 fun/informative stories about yourself/life/experience prepared. Make sure not to answer the question directly and up front like "I failed when...". Instead imply your answer in the middle of the story.

I feel these type of questions are hazing to make sure you prepared for the interview. In any case prepare and blast through them.

It’s all about turning the negative into a positive.

The worst thing my manager said about me is my code is sometimes unclear. So I read code complete and now produce much better code (that’s the outline but you need details when probed of course.)

My biggest weekness is perfectionism that leads to missing deadlines. Ive been working on this and now ive reduce the time to deliver and usually meet my estimates.

Etc.

My biggest weekness is perfectionism

I would never give that answer. It’s as trite and predictable as college entrance essays about how a volunteer trip overseas was the most impactful thing in your life.

you can say essentially the same thing and re-word it in such a way that it is less trite:

"my biggest weakness is that i prioritise code quality, completeness and long-term maintainability above all other concerns, without understanding the broader engineering or business context where sometimes an ugly short-term hack or ignoring edge cases may be necessary to get a release out the door on schedule for a marketing campaign, or temporarily mitigate a production issue, or allow a project to be delivered on budget"

note: this is clearly still a weakness in an engineer, ideally you also need to talk through how you recognised this issue, what resources you used to change your behaviour and improve your performance in time or budget constrained situations, and what the result was...

My current reply would be two fold.

1. “My biggest weakness is front end UI/UX. If you are expecting a great UI person, I’m not your guy.”

The purpose of that answer is to both show self awareness and self select out of jobs I know that I won’t be a good fit for.

2. “When I was a team lead/architect at the company before my current one, I realized I had X, Y, Z weaknesses even though I accomplished what they hired me for before the company changed directions. I ‘self demoted’ and found a company where I could fill in those skills gaps and strengthen those areas. Now as I pursue new challenges, I’m sure I will discover new weaknesses, but just as before, I have a methodical method for learning new soft and hard skills by doing $X”

> 1. “My biggest weakness is front end UI/UX. If you are expecting a great UI person, I’m not your guy.”

Clever, but I assume you've already selected out of such jobs before you hit the interview. So you are in an interview for a back end job.

Which means it's not much different from saying "My biggest weakness is Enterprise sales, if you need someone to land you that million dollar contract, I'm not your guy."

I think my perfectionism example is better because it is a genuine weakness. I have shown that it leads to things taking too long which is a real issue for companies, and also that the candidate is working on addressing it (so they want to improve).

> 2. “When I was a team lead/architect at the company before my current one, I realized I had X, Y, Z weaknesses even though I accomplished what they hired me for before the company changed directions. I ‘self demoted’ and found a company where I could fill in those skills gaps and strengthen those areas. Now as I pursue new challenges, I’m sure I will discover new weaknesses, but just as before, I have a methodical method for learning new soft and hard skills by doing $X”

This is effective, as long as you can answer the follow up questions about why you had to leave that company and not move within it, etc.

Clever, but I assume you've already selected out of such jobs before you hit the interview. So you are in an interview for a back end job.

I always use my network of trusted external recruiters. You often see postings for “full stack developers”, but once you actually talk to the recruiters, you find out that the hiring company would love that in theory, but they will take someone who is good on the back end. Also, I have some front end experience and I can usually get through an interview, but my fear is that I’ll interview well enough to set false expectations.

This is effective, as long as you can answer the follow up questions about why you had to leave that company and not move within it, etc.

I kind of hinted at it when I said “the company changed direction”. They decided that they “didn’t want to be a software company” and they were moving toward trying to fit everything into none custom off the shelf solutions and hire contractors (like WorkDay contractors) to customize solutions. They wanted to turn us into a ticket resolving/report writing department.

Even while I was lead we were mostly using software developer contractors.

And if you're exactly the opposite...?

That’s fine too. Basically most traits are a trade off that you can draw a SWOT analysis for. Mention WT then SO plus how you have changed to try to get the best of both worlds.

I find the “manager” question especially odious because of the presumption that one’s manager is correct and/or an insightful observer.

In my experience, its best to drive the discussion into technical areas that are so interesting that the interviewer runs out of time to ask their dumb canned questions, including the "tell me about a time" questions (and hopefully also the whiteboarding questions). For example, if there's a new or emerging tool or technology that you're familiar with but the interviewer doesn't know much about, try and drive the discussion in that area. They'll likely be very curious to know if the new tool/tech can be useful to them, and will want to know all about your experience with it, giving you a chance to brag about areas where you're strong (or at least, stronger than them).

Look just tell them what they want to hear. Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. They're probably not even listening.

They want to know if you're interested in self-improvement, and how well you get along with people.

> "what's the worst thing your previous manager would say about you"

I have too much free time because I get things done so fast, I am always asking for more work, or making code comments and improvements.

> "tell me about a time when you failed"

I was building a notification system for my previous company, and began using RabbitMQ. After my last manager realized what I was building he moved me on to the team to build out a core internal event driven architecture.

This is the worst possible advice.

It shows you are a narcissist, incapable of learning from experience, incapable of accurate self-analysis (identifying weaknesses or areas of improvement).

It also shows you struggle with soft skills, because you have completely misunderstood the point of these questions and are treating them as an opportunity to 'win' the question or 'beat' the interviewer. You are showing that appearing clever is more important than being smart.

You think the questions are beneath you, you think honesty is beneath you, and that interactions between people are defined only by the letter of the law and not its spirit. You know very well the intent of the questions, but you play games with your answers?

No one is looking for an answer here that says "I have no weaknesses and have never failed". Which would be a better and more honest answer than the "clever" answers you are suggesting.

You might as well be saying "I decline to answer because I am too smart to answer this question. Where's my signing bonus, will I be receiving it today, before the end of this interview? Because I have won, yes? I won the question by giving a non answer that makes me look great, so I am the cleverest! Therefore you must make me an offer immediately, yes? Because I am so clever! I beat the test! I beat YOU!"

a/k/a "no hire".

Follow this advice if you wish to remain unemployed or (arguably worse) hired by an idiot, into a team of fellow idiots. Which if you answer this way is where you belong.

literally the second thing I said summarized your entire rant.

Paraphrased again: > They want to know you are interested in self improvement

I am merely helping the guy out, to point out that the super negative question shouldn't get to his head.

You, my numeric friend, 4ec0755f5522, should try being less negative. You just made a lot of super negative assumptions:

> "idiot this, idiot that"

what's the saying, there's a million ways to skin a cat? Morbid as it may be, there's many ways to solve a problem and answer a question, and some ways may resonate better with some people. You have no idea what company or role the guy is applying for, or what they are looking for. Maybe they are looking for a super douche sales guy, in which case they need someone who is pure ego and arrogance. Everyone has a place in society.

Life isn't about being perfect all the time. Sometimes if someone is giving you a bs question, they might know it, and they might expect a bs answer back, simply because it's fun.

1 Everybody fails. Not everybody learns from failure.

2 A manager will say at least one negative thing about you. Not everyone grows from criticism.

Your goals: 1) You can recognize your failures, take responsibility for your failures, fix your failures, and learn from them

2) You can take constructive criticism, recognize that criticism is not personal, and use it to improve yourself.

The person you do NOT want to be is the one who blames others, sees not fault in themselves, and never grows.

I have no idea how to deal with it but I sympathize with your problem. It almost feels like the interviewer is trying to tilt you just to measure how you will react. Like if you're on a date and the girl says "So bjourne, what is the worst thing your previous girlfriend would say about you?" You'd probably think that she is a psycho and stay away but if an recruiter asks it, it's ok.

Also, there are a number of responses you could say to your date that would not be okay in a job interview.

Don't take it too literally. If the worst isn't easy to talk about, choose your second worst.

When I get this question, my problem is I'm too optimistic (possibly righteous, narcissistic, idk?). I think this is because I go easy on myself and others for mistakes and just try to avoid creating or being in the situation.

Answer in a way to turn things in your advantage.

"tell me about a time when you failed"

Failed to meet deadline (which you never do) that one time where you take initiative to rewrite spagetti legacy code from scratch. Later on everyone thanked you for that. But yes - first time it looked like a failure.

"what's the worst thing your previous manager would say about you"

Manager was pedantic asshole and insisted on doing thing his way. You did it your way and succeeded making manager unhappy because you took a risk and challenged the stigma jeopardizing his role.

Sound genuine. Or better yet be genuine. Share openly. Everybody has setbacks at some point, so don't get defensive about it.

Remember in the long run, the hard times are best because that's when you grow.

There is probably much better advice out there, but if they are throwing an oldie "time you failed" or "tell me about your weaknesses" question at me, I generally just reply with the (equally as old) "Once I failed to hit a deadline because Im a perfectionist and X wasn't quite right. I've since learned to better manage my efforts on key priority areas".

The "perfectionist" route is a fairly adaptable answer for any of the "state a negative about yourself" trap cards.

Really, most of the time when I feel that I'm over-engineering something, if I repress the feeling and get away with it, it becomes useful later, when I've already solved a problem I didn't know I was going to have.

The general approach can be okay but don't call yourself a perfectionist at a job interview.

Hasn't had any negative impact in any of the interviews I have said it in after they ask for a weakness, but sure. What would you say instead?

Just tell the truth, and don't complain about your old boss or your former colleagues.

No comment beyond that's a terrible title that tells me nothing about what you're asking

Fixed - thanks!

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