Turn Failure into an Asset: How to Use Setbacks to Become a Standout Candidate

female recruiters working in an office

We’ve also experienced every smooth talker who has attempted to avoid the question, and we wouldn’t recommend: 

  • Brushing off the question with a non-answer ("My biggest failure is working too hard")

  • Offering successful outcomes you just wish had gone better

  • Taking tactical ownership while subtly pointing fingers at strategic issues beyond your control

  • Dwelling too much on the failure itself and not enough on the rebound

The way you respond to these types of questions tells us more about leadership potential than your resume ever could.

Here’s a counterintuitive truth: one of the strongest ways to stand out in an interview isn’t by reciting your wins. It’s by owning your failures. How you talk about what didn’t go well often reveals more about your leadership potential than a list of accomplishments.

Most candidates come in polished and prepared with a highlight reel. But what separates exceptional leaders from the rest isn’t a spotless record. Instead, it’s their relationship with failure.

Companies aren’t looking for perfection because people are messy and setbacks are inevitable. What matters is how you respond.

We pay close attention to how candidates navigate and learn from hard moments. We’re looking for resilience, self-awareness, and the kind of clarity that only comes from reflection. That’s where true leadership shows up.

Why Interviewers Specifically Dig into Your Setbacks

When an interviewer asks about your failures, we're not trying to catch you or make you uncomfortable. We're opening a window into aspects of your character that would likely remain hidden when you’re trying to put your best self on display:

  • Emotional intelligence: Do you have the self-awareness to recognize where you went wrong and the humility to admit it?

  • Accountability: Can you own your part without resorting to blame-shifting?

  • Learning agility: Did this experience actually change your approach, or was it just an unfortunate blip?

  • Leadership maturity: Can you discuss failure without shame or defensiveness?

The REPAIR Framework: Turn Setbacks into Assets

Here’s a fool-proof method to professionally and authentically discussing professional missteps:

Recognize the failure honestly.

Don't minimize or reframe it as a partial success. Call it what it was: “We missed our production deadline by three weeks, causing a significant customer backorder situation" or "I lost a key shift supervisor because I failed to recognize the pressure our new quotas were putting on the floor team."

Explain the context without making excuses.

Provide just enough background for understanding without sounding defensive: "Our consumer goods packaging redesign coincided with an unexpected material shortage from our primary supplier."

Analyze what went wrong and why.

Show that you've reflected deeply enough to understand the mechanics of the failure: "Looking back, I realized I was letting my optimism override the concrete signals that we were off-track."

Pinpoint your specific role and responsibility.

Be precise about your contribution to what went wrong: "As the team lead, I failed to set clear expectations early on" or "I underestimated the technical complexity and didn't build in enough buffer."

Reinforce how you’ve applied these insights.

Connect the dots to current behavior: "Now I implement phased rollouts for all service process changes, with mandatory feedback loops from field technicians before expanding to the entire team."

Identify the lessons learned.

Articulate the specific insights that emerged: "This taught me that technical debt isn't just an engineering issue—it's a business liability that needs strategic management."

Selecting the Right Examples

Not all failures are created equal when it comes to interview discussions. The best examples tend to be:

  • Meaningful but not catastrophic: Significant enough to demonstrate real learning but not so devastating that they raise concerns about your judgment.

  • Recent enough to be relevant, distant enough to show growth: Ideally within the last 2-4 years, giving you enough time to implement lessons learned.

  • Appropriate to the role's scope and stakes: The scale of the failure should align with the level of responsibility you're seeking.

While professional examples are typically best, personal failures can sometimes reveal character dimensions that workplace examples can't. Reserve these for moments when they genuinely illuminate your leadership resilience.

Tailoring Your Approach to Different Interviews

The depth and nature of your failure discussion should evolve throughout the interview process:

  1. Screening Interview:  Keep examples concise and focused on clear learning outcomes.

  2. In-Depth Interviews & Client Interviews: Be prepared to go deeper on the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of navigating failure.

Listen carefully for themes highlighted throughout the interview process. Then, incorporate these insights when discussing how you've grown from failures.

Be selective  of failure topics according to the role you’re interviewing for: 

  1. C-suite and Executive Roles: Interviewers are particularly interested in how you've handled strategic misfires with significant business impact. 

  2. Middle Management Candidates: Focus on team and execution failures.

  3. Technical Leadership Roles: Highlight the balance between innovation and pragmatism.

Navigating the Follow-Up Questions

Great interviewers continue to probe deeper to test the authenticity and depth of your reflection. Here's how to handle the most common follow-ups:

"What would you do differently now?"

What we're really asking: Have you truly evolved, or are you just theoretically aware of what went wrong?

How to respond: Be specific and actionable. Instead of "I'd communicate better," try "I'd institute weekly checkpoints with direct reporting on our three critical metrics, and I'd create clear decision rights, so we could pivot faster when those metrics showed we were off-track."

"How did others respond to this failure?"

What we're really asking: How do you handle relationships under pressure? Do you maintain trust even when things go sideways?

How to respond: Be honest but measured. Acknowledge any tension, then highlight how you navigated it: "The board was understandably concerned, and I felt that pressure. I focused on providing total transparency about both the problem and my plan to address it, which ultimately strengthened our relationship."

"How has this changed your approach to similar situations?"

What we're really asking: Are you adaptable, or do you repeat the same mistakes?

How to respond: Draw a direct line from the failure to a specific new behavior or framework: "This experience fundamentally changed how I approach scaling teams. I now use a capacity planning model that looks at both current workload and anticipated growth, with built-in contingencies for if we hit 80% of our growth targets or 120%."

"What support did you need to overcome this setback?"

What we're really asking: Do you know when to ask for help? Can you leverage resources appropriately when things go wrong?

How to respond: Show both humility and strategic thinking: "I needed both technical expertise and emotional support. I brought in our most experienced engineer as a consultant while also creating a small group of trusted advisors who could give me unfiltered feedback on my handling of the situation."

"How long did it take you to recover from this failure?"

What we're really asking: Are you resilient? Do you bounce back or burn out?

How to respond: Acknowledge the real timeline without defensiveness: "The immediate fire-fighting took six intense weeks. Rebuilding full market confidence took about six months of consistent delivery against our revised commitments. What I learned, though, continues to shape my leadership approach today."

Where Candidates Go Off Track

Even well-prepared candidates can sabotage themselves when discussing failures. The most common errors occur when candidates deflect responsibility by pointing to external factors: "My team just couldn't execute to the standard we needed," or "The market shifted unexpectedly." This pattern of attributing outcomes to forces beyond your control makes hiring managers justifiably nervous about your capacity to drive results regardless of circumstances.

Equally damaging is the tendency to offer examples that feel safe but reveal nothing substantial. When a candidate tells us their biggest failure is being "such a perfectionist" or that they "occasionally miss emails," what we actually hear is either a lack of self-awareness or an unwillingness to engage authentically with the question.

Your emotional composure while discussing the failure communicates volumes. If recounting the experience still visibly frustrates or upsets you, it signals you haven't fully processed or integrated the lessons. Great leaders can discuss even significant setbacks with measured perspective and clarity.

Finally, watch your level of detail. Getting lost in the nitty gritty of what happened suggests you're still too close to the situation to have extracted the takeaways that matter. The ability to distill a complex failure into its essential lessons demonstrates the kind of executive thinking that impresses interviewers far more than an exhaustive play-by-play of events.

Authentic Resilience

The most compelling candidates don't shy away from failure discussions. In fact, they lean into them as opportunities to demonstrate their growth mindset and professional maturity.

When you can articulate a significant failure with clarity, ownership, and evident learning, you signal to employers that you're someone who can navigate the inevitable challenges of growing businesses. The next time an interviewer asks about your failures, recognize it not as a trap but your moment to differentiate yourself from candidates who only know how to talk about success.