Like a lot of hiring managers, Adriane Schwager likes to ask candidates about times in their career they’ve made a mistake. Usually, it’s to get an idea of how you handle stressful situations and how you learn from previous errors.
For Schwager, the CEO and co-founder of the hiring platform GrowthAssistant with 20 years of recruiting experience, the answer can uncover a big red flag: whether the person has low ownership of their work.
In listening to the response, Schwager tells CNBC Make It that she tries to assess whether the person can own up to the mistake, or if it seems like they’re making it out to be someone else’s fault.
Take an example where someone forgot to send something important to accounting, and it cost the business $250,000, she says. If the candidate discusses how the accident was the result of someone else not sending them the right information, …