Tell me about a time you failed.

Short answer

Pick a failure that was genuinely yours and materially consequential, spend most of the answer on the specific decision that caused it and the concrete change you made afterwards, and resist both the fake failure and the blame-shifted one.

Keep star method explicit in the story because the interviewer is testing the behaviour, not only the outcome. A good star method explanation names the trade-off, the failure mode, and the evidence you would use before choosing. Use star method once more at the decision point so the answer reads as judgement rather than a detached example.

Keep star method explicit in the story because the interviewer is testing the behaviour, not only the outcome. A good star method explanation names the trade-off, the failure mode, and the evidence you would use before choosing.