Tell me about a time when you did a mistake and how you handled it

This question is a behavioral question that the interviewer is asking to gauge your ability to handle mistakes, take responsibility, and rectify the situation. They're not trying to find out whether or not you've made mistakes - as everybody does - but how you handle them. You need to pick an example where you made a genuine mistake, rather than simply having something go wrong because of circumstances outside your control. The key here is to show self-awareness, accountability, and demonstrate your problem-solving skills.

To answer this properly, you should use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result).

1. Situation: Explain the context of your mistake.
2. Task: Describe your role and the tasks you were supposed to perform.
3. Action: Explain your mistake and how you realized it.
4. Result: Describe what you did to fix the mistake and what you've learned from this experience.

In my previous role as a project manager, we had a highly critical project (Situation). My responsibility was to track project timelines and coordinate between teams (Task). Once, in the rush of things, I overlooked a key phase in the project schedule and it resulted in missed deadlines (Action). Once I realized my mistake, I immediately communicated it to the team and the client. I worked extra hours along with the team to cover the lost ground. Fortunately, we were able to deliver the project without a significant delay. From that experience, I learned the importance of attention to detail and double-checking all elements in project management. I also implemented a checklist system for tracking project phases to avoid such oversights in the future (Result).

As a software engineer, I once deployed a piece of code without running a final round of tests (Action), and it was my responsibility to develop and test the code (Task). This caused a bug which affected our application's performance (Situation). Upon realizing the mistake, I owned up to it to my team lead and quickly started working on a hotfix. I worked through the night to rectify it and ensured the application was back to its usual performance by morning (Action). I apologized to my team for the oversight and then proposed to include a mandatory step of test cases for every deployed code in the future. This proposal was implemented and it significantly reduced such incidents in the future (Result). This incident taught me the importance of thoroughness and verification before deployment.