In this instructional video, Natalie Fisher explains why interviewers ask about past mistakes and how to answer effectively using the SARI formula (Situation, Action, Results, Interesting features). She frames the answer as a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, emphasizing personal ownership, specific actions taken to fix the error, and the positive outcome or lesson learned. A concrete example is provided—forgetting to invite a key decision‑maker to a meeting—and the steps to own the mistake, correct it, and highlight growth are detailed. Fisher also stresses avoiding “we” language, adding memorable interesting features, and showing maturity. The video concludes with a promotional call‑to‑action for a free guide and workbook that offers deeper SARI instruction, templates, and practice questions to help viewers prepare for situational interview questions.
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Situational interview question: Tell me about a time when you made a mistake at work. In this video, we will cover why this question is asked, what they really want to know, what to say when you're answering, so how to answer, and we'll go through the step-by-step and You'll be able to wrap it up gracefully without rambling, so stay tuned. So what's the deal here? Why are they asking this? They want to see how you handle mistakes. They want to see how you see mistakes, what your overall attitude is towards them. The question is designed to get inside your head and view how you handle screw-ups. And what you— how you think about them and how you internalize them. You might have guessed it, we're going to be using the SARI formula. And the SARI formula, if you haven't heard of it before, it stands for situation, action, results, and interesting features. The formula comes in many different forms, so you may have heard of the STAR interview formula or the SAR formula. And it's basically all the same: situation, task, action, and result. So now that you know— now that you know about that, in my head I always think of it as a story because it can be hard to remember all these pieces. So a story always has a beginning where you introduce what the task or the situation is, middle as the meat of the story where the action happens, and literally where the action took place, where the hero comes in and saves the day. And then the ending, which is the result where you wrap it up and you tell how the story ended happily. Interesting features sprinkled in are always great because they make you more interesting and they add appeal to your answer and they make you memorable. So how do you answer this one? Step 1: situation or task. So setting the stage, you want to present the mistake that you made. For example, we're going to use a specific example here. Say you forgot to invite someone to a meeting that was a key decision maker and you scheduled a meeting and you forgot to invite this key person. So step 2, what did you do? This is the action portion. So the meat of the story. What action did you take? So the first thing that I always say is I own up to the mistake. That's what top candidates always do. No excuses. Flat out, this is what happened and this was my oversight and this is what I plan to do about it. So with the action, you can talk about how you proceeded to fix it. What options did you choose? You go through the scenario of what you did and you describe exactly your actions. You want to be careful to only talk about what you did because if you say we or us, that kind of dilutes your story and you want to make sure you're talking about you the whole time because that's what they care about. Step 3, the result. So what was the end result? Let them know how it turned out, how you handled it, how you fixed it, and how it ended. And 4 is the bonus, interesting features. For interesting features, you can wrap up with a cool little saying like, it's not a mistake, it's a lesson if you never repeat it. Growth— the biggest growth moments happen from mistakes, and mistakes are rich with experience. They mean character building, learning, and lots of growth. So don't shy away from talking about them. Embrace them, own them, and make sure you Tell them how they ended up and how you were able to fix them. And there we have it. What is your attitude towards make— when you make a mistake? How do you deal with things when they don't go perfectly? You want to show maturity in your answer and that you got to the facts, that you just decided what you're going to do, looked at the situation, and took the best course of action you could to fix it. You want to show that you took responsibility and you owned up to it, and you want to highlight what you learned in the end. Thank you so much for watching. If you'd like more help with these types of questions, I've put together a comprehensive guide. You can click the link below and get free instant access, and it's called The Guide to Situational Interviewing. What you'll get is when you download this guide. It took me a long time to put this together. It's going to have an in-depth look at the SARI formula, step-by-step broken down the psychology behind it. It's going to have a series of concrete examples for the top 10 most commonly asked situational questions. It will have fill-in-the-blank templates for each and every question so you can fill in your own answers and your own stories. And if you're still getting stuck because preparing your own stories is tough, I've also included 25 questions to come up with your own stories much quicker. So 25 questions you can ask yourself to get your mind thinking. You're definitely going to come up with some great stories. You'll also get this beautifully designed workbook that is specifically designed for you to prepare for your next interview. By the end of working through this guide, you'll be totally ready for any situational interview question that comes your way. So don't miss out. Grab it right now. You can click below and have it instantly. So thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next week on Natalie TV. Cut. Okay, that was the end of the Video number 4. Yeah. Cut!
