As a candidate for the top marketing position at a large, global-consulting firm, a hard-charging Dallas executive impressed the hiring manager by recounting one of her most important failures. "When I became vice president of marketing for my last firm, I launched a branding program that required every partner to adopt a consistent approach to marketing and sales," she says. "Although the board was enthusiastic about branding, it was a radical change for the firm's freewheeling culture, where each partner did his or her own thing." When the partners continued to contact the media and publish sales brochures on their own, the marketing executive was forced to abandon her original plan. "We adopted a more conventional public-relations program that better matched the firm's way of doing things," she says.

Her willingness to admit the mistake and describe what she learned from the experience convinced the new company that she was an ideal candidate. "They were impressed that I had learned that corporate culture could make or break marketing," says the executive, who was offered a job the day after her interview and now manages a successful program in 32 countries.

Dayton Ogden, president of executive recruiting firm SpencerStuart in New York, recalls interviewing a candidate for a CEO position at a global company. "The most impressive thing he told me was that he wasted the first three months of his current job because he hadn't conducted due diligence thoroughly," says Mr. Ogden. The candidate was frank about his strengths and weaknesses as well, he adds. "He had enough balance to tell me he would be good at 75% of the position because of his past experience but needed support to accomplish the remaining 25% effectively."

Executive-search professionals and hiring managers say that demonstrating what you've learned from your mistakes can help you outshine the competition for top professional or management jobs. "The best people don't simply catalog their accomplishments," says Ann Peckenpaugh, vice president of Schweichler Associates, a search firm in Corte Madera, Calif. "They're also prepared to discuss how they learned from their failures and how they solved difficult problems."

Most employers are pleased when candidates can point to a few bloopers among their successful achievements. "The ones who are able to discuss how they handled mistakes or bad decisions show they can deal with inevitable setbacks," says Ron Zingaro, president of Austin, Texas, recruiters Zingaro and Co. If you can describe how you turned around a negative situation or solved a self-created problem, you demonstrate your general approach to handling challenging situations.

A willingness to discuss your mistakes also shows that you have advanced your career by learning from experience -- at another company's expense. "Mistakes stay with us longer than other [lessons]," says Mary Lindley Burton, president of Burton Strategies, a New York career counseling firm, and author of "In Transition" (Harperbusiness, 1992). "In a world in which fewer organizations give employees a chance to fail, candidates who can show the scars they've acquired on someone else's payroll have an automatic advantage."

A mature attitude about weaknesses and mistakes demonstrates credibility and self-confidence. "If you don't understand where some of your significant mistakes were made, there's a problem," says David B. Radden, an executive recruiter based in Los Angeles. "If you aren't clear on them, you're significantly in denial." Job seekers who claim they've never had a failure? "You know they're either a finger pointer or totally clueless," says Mr. Radden.

A willingness to address your mistakes will accelerate your candidacy, particularly if a recruiter is involved. Most executive search consultants provide their clients with a written assessment of each candidate's background, strengths and weaknesses. The individuals who can point to a few failed projects provide the recruiter with material they won't have to seek elsewhere. "If a candidate can provide me first-hand information I'd have to extract from a reference at a later point, I can present him or her faster to my client," says Mr. Zingaro.

An interview is no place to start fishing around for mistakes or improvising disaster stories. To gain the most mileage from your mistakes and avoid getting caught on the spot, use the following six tips to help you prepare for your next interview.

1. Anticipate the inevitable. Although most candidates for executive jobs typically rehearse anecdotes about their achievements before they meet a recruiter or hiring manager, few prepare problem stories. "Candidates think that when they have you one on one, they can win you over," says Charles Splaine, president of Splaine & Associates, a recruiter based in Los Gatos, Calif. Before the interview, practice how you would respond if a recruiter or hiring manager asked you to:

• Describe a problem or crisis you created and how you handled it.
• Describe a situation where you made the wrong decision. What did you learn?
• Provide an example of a situation in which you failed or had less-than-desired results.

2. Select two showcase errors -- carefully. It's important to pick situations that you ultimately got right -- not those that became unmitigated disasters. Mistakes that resulted from being too zealous or aggressive are usually most effective because they suggest enthusiasm and a can-do attitude. Errors due to underestimating, misreading or overanticipating are generally safe as well. "Select mistakes that parallel what you'll be doing in your new job," says Ms. Burton. "If you're going into a deadline-intensive environment, talk about the time you missed a deadline -- and how you handled the consequences. If you're interviewing with an Internet startup company, talk about a situation where you had to juggle many balls -- and dropped one."

Avoid failures that can make you appear to be overly cautious, nitpicking or cheap, as well as anything illegal or unethical, such as expense account violations or questionable accounting practices. Any of these errors can plant a seed of doubt about your motivation and approach.

3. Prepare blunder vignettes. Your stories must be constructed carefully and rehearsed. Many professionals find that a four-part formula works best.

• State a misapprehension or misconception you held in the past. You might say, "When I first got into the widget business, I was convinced the key to success was focusing on consumer markets."
• Describe the wakeup call that made you realize you were wrong. "Six months after rolling out a new strategy, declining consumer sales were the first clue that my initial assessment was off track."
• Discuss how you changed and what the results were. "After some hard thinking with our key customers and management team, I recommended we launch a new campaign directed at industrial markets. We changed our advertising mix and product packaging, although we were three months behind the competition."
• Assess the aftermath of the problem and how your perspective on a key issue changed. "We took a short-term hit, but have a solid position in the industrial widget sector. Now I'll always conduct preliminary market research, even if it means taking more time."

4. Practice your delivery. You won't be credible unless you can narrate your vignettes with a high-level of comfort and answer pointed questions about the details. Rehearse with friends, colleagues or advisers to build the confidence you need to stay on track and maintain listener interest. Be succinct. You should be able to tell your basic story in less than two minutes. With rare exceptions, anything longer suggests defensiveness about your errors, rather than a commitment to learning from mistakes.

5. Identify one or two problem spots at the prospective employer that parallel problems you have faced and offer advice. You might say, "I noticed that Netco is planning to focus its sales efforts in high-growth metropolitan areas. I learned the hard way that there's still plenty of business left in smaller markets. In my last position, I steered the sales force away from small towns and our business dropped 37%. We lost more than $2 million in revenues within three months. When we went back to the small markets, sales jumped back up."

6. Ask questions that reflect what you've learned from your errors. If you ran off a big client because you were overwhelmed by your workload, ask about workload expectations and how work is allocated. Cite your mistake as evidence for the need to manage workload and utilization closely. If corporate culture taught you a hard lesson, query the interviewer about the company's structure, operating procedures and reward systems.