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“Tell Me About a Time You Had to Deliver Bad News”

Everyone on the shortlist can do the job on a good day. This question is about the bad day — what you do with a problem while hiding it is still an option. Get a 60-second story that leads with the news, dates what you knew against what you said, and ends with what actually happened.

Sample answer

Generated for: Hospital ward administrator (9 years) interviewing for an operations analyst role — the rota system lost a fortnight of shifts and the ward manager had to be told

I ran the rota desk for a ward of [40] staff, and the scheduling system dropped [two weeks] of shifts overnight.

Yours is written from your own background and the role you're actually interviewing for — not this one. The first one is free — no card. After that, $9.99 for a single credit or $49.99 for ten.

First one is free — no card needed.

Credits

— credits available

Your Last (or Current) Job Title *

Role You're Interviewing For *

Who You Had to Tell *

It has to be a time you did the telling, not a time you were in the room while someone else did. Interviewers probe this one hard, because it is the most commonly borrowed story there is.

What the News Was *

This steers your opening sentence, which is where the answer is won. If it was a mistake, don't shy away from it — told plainly and in the first person, it's the strongest version of this story you can give.

What Actually Happened (optional)

Rough notes are fine — what the news was, when you knew it, when you said it, and what happened after. We will never invent an incident, a client, a mistake or an outcome for you: leave this blank and you get bracketed placeholders instead, because interviewers probe this question with follow-ups harder than almost any other, and a detail you didn't give us is one you can't defend two minutes later.

1 credit per generation • Powered by GPT-4o • Takes ~15 seconds

Also explore:

A Time You Gave Difficult Feedback →A Time You Failed →A Difficult Customer Example →