How to Turn a $1M Failure into a Job Offer

We’ve all had those moments where we missed a target, went over budget, or a project didn’t go as planned, and it can feel like those experiences are “un-hirable” dealbreakers. Employers aren’t looking for perfection; they’re looking for accountability and growth. In this episode, Jeff and I are going to show you how to take those stressful “losses” and reframe them into powerful wins for your resume and interviews.

This week, Jeff and I talk about:

• Turning “missed targets” into impressive achievements
• Strategic exclusion on your resume (what they don’t need to know)
• Why hiring managers actually want to hear about your mistakes
• How to spin a mid-project pivot as a major accomplishment
• The “budget trick” for making overspent projects look successful
• Owning team wins even if you didn’t do it alone
• Which failures should never, ever be on your resume

Listen in to help us help you give yourself the best chance of landing your Next Job… NOW :)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Greg Langstaff. I'm a certified resume strategist, and I have written over 2,000 resumes, and I love helping people get new jobs.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And I'm Jeff, and I have a lot of questions about getting jobs. In this episode, we're talking about an interesting topic: how to make your failures look good on a resume.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

And you are hearing this from absolute experts in failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

I wouldn't say that. What have you failed at?

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I fail at things all the time.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Save that for the interview question at the end. That's spoiler alert. It's coming. Welcome to Next Job Now. The podcast where we help you get your next job right now. Talk to me about failure. What do people think about when they say, I failed at this at my last job?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I feel like a failure can come across in so many different ways. Like it's a very common interview question to be asked: tell us about a time you learned from a failure. And it's really important to have like an answer for that. And when that comes up, like if they ask you, tell me about a time you learned from a failure, I always say, first pick something from very early in your career.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

When one would expect you to fail and learn, and pick a story of a time that something genuinely happened that taught you a lesson that you now carry around with you today. Like my go-to example of learning from a failure was my first time supervising a staff member. That person had like an important task. They totally dropped the ball, they totally failed. And when I went to meet with that person, my staff, and my boss, I thought my boss and I were going to remount this staff member for performing poorly. And I was shocked to the core when I was the person who got in trouble because my staff member did not perform well. And that is the moment at a very early age of my career when I learned the leader is accountable for the performance of the staff. And if they're underperforming, it's your job to make sure that you're supporting them to get them up to the level they're at. And now I integrate that into all of my leadership approach, that like sense of ownership and accountability.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

And I think owning that failure as a formative moment of who you are is such a powerful way to answer that question.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

And it's a low stakes, it's like, oh, you're actually a great manager because of this. And we're looking for a manager. And now we know that Greg is going to lead with integrity. And we know that Greg is going to support his staff. And that's what we're looking for. So by answering with through an honest, genuine failure, you're turning it into a positive, very positive, hireable, desirable thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to score some bonus points on talking about like how you bounce back from a failure, tell them you then took a course, listened to a podcast, studied the subject on YouTube, on LinkedIn Learning, and like now that's one of your greatest strengths because that failure rocked your world so hard.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

It's also important when you're talking about a failure in an interview to tell them why you failed. Because if you say, and then no one showed up to our event, and I have no idea why, like that shows no critical thinking, no learning. Like you need to dissect for them the cause of the failure and don't deflect it. Like, what did you do wrong? Because that's the kind of person they want to hire. Someone who makes a mistake, realizes how they could have done better, and then comes up with an action plan to improve and prevent that mistake from happening again.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

What's the hiring manager really want to understand when they ask you that question about failure?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

They want to know if you learn from your mistakes because you're gonna make mistakes. They want to know if you will use those experiences to develop systems to prevent issues from coming up again, if you will use that to reflect and identify ways you can learn and become better. Like that's what they want to see. They're not looking for someone who's never made a mistake.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

What about accountability? Do they want to see you be like, yeah, I was part of a team, and that team, they just weren't working together, and you know, that caused that project to fail. And I was really on board with it. It breaks my heart to see a project that cares so deep. Like you're passing that blank. I feel like this question is about accountability. Who are you going to be in that moment when you do fail?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah. Well, folks, what you want to work with someone who's going to be accountable for their failures. Like Jeff. Yes. You've worked in some organizations where people are not huge on taking accountability for their failures. Sure. But passing it off. Do you like working with those people?

SPEAKER_02 5:28

I enjoy where I currently am working.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Uh I don't mind saying it. It sucks working with someone who will never admit that they made a mistake. So, of course, hiring managers don't want to hire someone who's going to skirt all responsibilities.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

When people think about failure, I think that they're thinking about like, oh, I missed my target. I didn't, we didn't hit our fundraising goal. Like you said, those external constraints, maybe the expectations of the role are ridiculous. Like and uh monthly revenue goals at the jewelry store are far too high. Like they're made so that you can't hit this sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

I actually have a couple of nice tricks for like on a resume, making it still look good if you have not hit your targets.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Okay, so like one of them that I like to do is like if you were trying to like up your profits 10% year over year, and you didn't hit that goal because something was going on. Uh COVID like knocked a lot of people's like production down, other things have like come into play. Um on a resume, instead of saying like we hit 98% of our goal or whatever, which is fine by the way, like 98%'s pretty good. Yeah. Um, but like you could use phrases like maintained profitability during a downtrending market. Ooh. Um like showed upward growth despite industry uh downward trends. Um we could say began recovery, underperforming product or team, like those things to say turning this around, or I'm doing pretty well despite the circumstances.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Let's let's do an exercise in reframing. Sure. I'm gonna give you some failures. What someone might think they failed, or when they're explaining to you, like, I can't put that in my resume because XYZ. And I want you to reframe it. Doesn't need to be a full bullet point, but reframe what we're talking about here. Okay. So, first example, missed $10 million fundraising target by 10%.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Oof. Achieved $9 million in raised funds.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Look how easily we turned that like, ah, yeah, I can't put that on my resume. We we missed our $10 million target. Yo, raise 9 million. Generated high engagement, but failed to convert into revenue.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

I just would talk about generating the high engagement as if that was the only goal. Again, now we're in resume advice. Resume, we spin everything for the positive.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yes. Okay, let's let's spin these for the resume only.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Inherited an underperforming team that had morale and performance issues.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Oh, I would say like elevated team culture to improve morale and performance issues. And if you have like any metrics, of course, that would be nice to throw in if there's like a team satisfaction survey or something.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Launched a marketing campaign that failed to go viral.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Okay. Uh, to turn that one around, I would say launched a marketing campaign across like all the channels and a data-informed omni-channel marketing campaign, which reached like maybe put in the grand total number if you can find it, or just say which outperformed expectations.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Did not meet sales quota despite constant outreach and follow-up.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Hmm. I would say, like, outperformed lead generation targets through persistent outreach and follow-up with clients, and maybe even throw some numbers in there, like how many client, how many clients did you reach out to, whatever. And so it's like, I outperformed the expectation of how hard I would try. And we just sort of again skirt over not mentioning the revenue performance. Exceeded allocated budget during project execution. That's a fun one. If you go over budget on a project, there's this weird inverse like benefit in which we won't mention the original budget, but like a project with a large budget sounds impressive. So I would say completed this project while managing a budget of this amount, and then suddenly you have like a context and scope and size of the project there, and don't tell them that you didn't go over or that you did go over, just tell them how much you spent. It'll sound like a big project.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Okay, last one. Original strategy failed, so we had to pivot mid-project.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

That's already an accomplishment. I would say, like, maybe pick it up in a situation where like quickly adapted to changing circumstances, establishing a new plan of action mid-project, which led to the successful on time, on budget completion of, and then describe the project.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Right? Just because it started wrong doesn't mean it was a failure. You fixed it. Yeah. That's the accomplishment. The accomplishment is fixing it. Yeah. I figure the theme that I'm seeing, it's like they don't know the story. You get to frame the story on your resume.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

You have wins. These are wins, whether or not you met the goal or not. But then if they don't know, then you just tell them the truth.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

With like you're not lying on your resume. Like I feel like people are going to be like, oh, I can't talk about this, I would die.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Don't lie on your resume, but like choose what part of the detail to share with them.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Managed a million-dollar budget. Well, yeah, it was originally $900,000. But it ended up being a million dollars. That just looks like you managed a million dollars. Right? Yeah. So how would you frame these amazing new bullets that we've created in your interview when you do need to speak to some examples?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

I think the same way we wrote about it. It's like strategic exclusion of the like the measurement that made that a failure. Like your $10 million fundraising example. Like you could tell that entire story about everything you did to raise the $9 million and never mention that it was a $10 million pro uh target. And like very, very unlikely that they ask you what was the target.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

This is the connection to owning our accomplishments and appreciating our accomplishments that I wanted to get to.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

That raising $9 million in your fundraising, whether it was you directly or part of a team, maybe you only raised $100,000.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

You can take credit for a team accomplishment on your own resume. You don't have to have done this thing single-handedly.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

That's it. Own your accomplishments, own your team accomplishments. You're a part of that team. You did the work, it goes on your resume. They don't know you missed a target, that you didn't hit your monthly sales goals. Just talk about what you've done and appreciate the work that you've done because you work hard. You work hard. Greg, before we wrap up, quick speed round. What failures should stay off the resume?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Getting fired. Um, like getting in trouble at work. If you have a better example of accomplishing something using that same skill. If you fundraised and hit half your target in 2023, but then you hit like 110% of your target in 2024, just talk about 2024. We don't need to spin something if we have a better real example that's an achievement. Uh the failures are to like put in detail that would otherwise be missing if we're like spinning a failure.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Perfect. All right. It is now time for unusual interviews where we ask each other questions that we hope you never get asked. My question for you today, Greg, is what is something that you tried but decided to quit?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Oh. Something I tried but decided to quit. There's gotta be some good examples of that. I've got one. You do? Yes. Uh this was like uh as many years ago in my lifeguarding days. I all the lifeguards who worked at my water park would like try out to go work for the city.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Because the city pools paid more, they gave you more hours, and like it was just kind of a status thing. Like it was very cool to work for the city, and like the water park was like a fallback place. Uh now I loved that water park and I loved working there every single day. But I went to try out for the city one year, and like I miffed a couple parts of the interview. I I failed at one of the like physical tests, and like people usually try again the next year and the next year, and like eventually you get in.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

And I just like didn't want to face that again, so I just sat tight at the water park for the next two summers after that. Yeah. If you were listening to this and you're 14 years old, go do your swimming lessons, get your lifeguard certification, best summer job ever. Jeff, you grew up in one of the most famous beach towns in this entire area.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Longest freshwater beach in the world. How did you not learn how to swim? I know how to swim. I was being dramatic.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

I was ending with a bang. I was lying on my resume.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

All right.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Um, no, I know how to float and swim. But I think sometimes I realize like if I was actually out there, like when I was snorkeling once, I was like, oh man, if I didn't have this life jacket, this would be a lot harder.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

So I think what I have swimming like in your pool doing laps, yes, I can make it from end to end. Thank you so much for joining this episode. Please like and subscribe. Send this to a friend if they're looking for a job. And next week, please join in as we talk about what to do when you're not hearing back.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Also, send this to any of your friends who are a failure. No, just kidding. I mean, well, maybe they could use it. But I'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Take care.