Part Five: Acing Interview Questions

How long are you willing to fail at this job before you succeed?

When asked this question, be on very sharp alert. I have found that when the interviewer gauges one’s resilience by these particular words, at least one of two things is true about the position: either the management under which the position is served has a history of being extremely, severely poor, or the role is exceptionally rigorous beyond technical proficiency that seemingly long-term, on-the-job training is the only route that leads to success.

Have you endured this type of stress in a professional setting? If not, what personal experience have you overcome in which you were pushed to the brink? You may need to rely on these scenarios to sufficiently prove your resilience to failure.

Simply affirming your commitment to a role will not satisfy most skilled interviewers, especially if your employment directly reflects their level of sound judgment. Therefore, unless you admit unwillingness to learn on the job, use an example from your past in which the limitations of your skills pushed you to the breaking point, but endurance prevailed.

The only other method I have used as a response is to question the notion of failure. My response resembles something like this:

As a former English Teacher, I know that the word "failure" is the absence of any possible path to success. Failure is the ultimate and unfulfilled conclusion of prior attempts to achieve a goal. Within the confines of the workforce, my personal belief is that there is always a way to a successful outcome; therefore, failure cannot exist. Areas of development can exist. Poor quality work exists. Regretful results exist. But the concept of failure at work implies that a task never had an achievable outcome.

So, unless the role and duties of the job contradict the laws of physics or a governing body, I know there is always a way to improve an action in order to obtain a desirable result. I’ve learned this in both my professional and personal life, and therefore, dedication to a challenge is not a competency with which I struggle; it is a quality I continue to master each and every time I face a new dilemma.

 

- Excerpt from Other Difficult Questions