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Dealing With Tricky Questions in Job Interviews

By Marco Cepeda

I had an interview recently and one of the canned questions that was used was "name a failure".

What exactly is a hiring manager trying to reveal with that type of question? It literally threw me and I responded that I had none from my recent work experience to refer to.

Was that an acceptable response?

Keith

*****

Dear Keith,

In a word, No -- It's not an acceptable response.

The hiring manager is trying to reveal the answer to this question, "what are his shortcomings? what are his beliefs about failure and will it help in this job function or hurt him?" Obviously, the operating belief behind it is that you must have failures. Obviously because that is the presupposition, yes?

See, it's not so much about the failures you've had or have not had. It's about how you've handled them and why you made those choices. It reveals how you will make choices in the future.

As Victor Frankle once said, you can't always choose your circumstances but you can always choose your attitude.

With that in mind, telling them "I've had no failures" is interpreted by them as "I have no faults and refuse to admit or acknowledge them. If something bad happens, I'll blame it on everyone but me."

Hey, nobody's perfect, right? (truism)

That's why you don't want to fall into the trap of answering a question with presuppositions (admitting failures you've never had) but at the same time, not giving them the opportunity to believe you are hiding something.

Our brain looks for similarity and contrast. In this context, saying you have no failures is more than a little suspicious. Why? Because it is expected that you want to look good and it is unusual for ANYONE to have zero "failure".

Therefore, it is outside normal expectations and so it calls attention to itself. That's when the brain of the hiring manager asks, "this is a little unusual, what is the motivation behind it?"

Translation: you are bullshitting!

The end result is, they simply want to know who you are.

Therefore, you tell them something like, "I don't know if I would call them failures because I believe you will always get a result... and it's not always what you were after. However, in the times when I didn't live up to expectations, I either took responsibility for what I could, or it was not in my control and there was nothing I could do. When that happens, I simply learn my lessons so that I can make better decisions. Nobody's perfect, right?"

Notice that I'm ending with a "truism". A truism is a statement most everyone will agree with and therefore, can not be argued against.

If he continues to ask for a specific example, I would run the same model. Pick something that is not necessarily a failure (or makes you look bad), but shows vulnerability and then discuss your decisions behind them and why you made those choices (hint: positive beliefs that anyone would agree with, like in my example).

That way, you don't fall into the normal expectations of admitting to faults that may disqualify you or of overcompensating to seem perfect.

Instead, you reframe the negative aspect without giving them the opportunity to be suspicious either way; you fall somewhere in between and answer with a statement that no one can argue with and reveals a positive attitude that just happens to seem much more important than the actual "failure"!

If you'd like to master the interviewing process, check out Marco's BetterJobsNow E-Book Course. Marco has combined the best principles in job searching along with his experience in psychology and hypnosis to offer a course that turns the tables and puts you in control of interviews. To find out more, visit this site: http://www.jobsearchinfo.com/ebook.htm

Interviewing skills are important, but it they're most useful when you're actually getting called in for interviews. If you don't have employers calling you yet, you should first work on generating job leads. We recommend getting your resume on all the job boards as a good first step in getting noticed.

If you sign up for the Employ.com Resume Posting Center, they will put your resume on over 90 job sites for you. Even if you want to post your resume on all the job boards yourself, you should check out the list of job boards under the "Sites We Post You To" option on the Employ.com Resume Posting Center home page just to be sure you have posted your resume on all the relevant sites. To get to the site, visit this address: http://posting.employ.com

By Marco Cepeda, Contributing Editor, JobSearchInfo.com
2004 JobSearchInfo.com

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