Dealing with failure.

your life and your history is yours, and yours alone. whether or not you want to share it is completely up to you. if someone asked me questions like who i was when i was 15 or 16, i would tell them that my own history is my own, and it's personal, and unless it directly relates to the skills needed for the job, it's none of their business. politely.

i'm sorry it threw you off a bit on the interview thing. that does kinda suck. but i think a lot of people would be WAY confused by that whole issue... why would they need to know about your history (except for work history, which makes sense)? what you deal with from your past and at what time and in what way is completely up to you. it's no one else's business.

but don't give up on the job either... you got a second interview cause they like you. cause they think you have potential. if they don't want to hire you because you didn't say everything there was to say about your childhood, then you prolly don't want to work for them anyway, cause that prolly means they judge you on who you were not who you are now. or something. just believe that if you and this job are the right fit for each other, it'll work out. and if you're not, then that right fit is still waiting for you.

 

I'd like to think I learn from my failures.
I doubt I do though.
Maybe slightly.
Not enough though.
I don't think I'd be able to give a coherent timline of my life, so you are not alone there.
Now that you know you "failed" here, maybe attempt to go through your life in your own time.
I think Prax' raises a good point, maybe there has been episodes in your life you would rather forget, maybe your life is too screwed up for you to deal with, I know mine is; maybe I should not project here.
I'm sorry you feel you have "failed" somehow, maybe you'll be a better man then me and learn from it, get over it, and be the better for it.
I deal with failure by shrugging it off and moving on, not a lot more to do than that I don't think.
No turing back the clock is possible.

 

I deal with failure either by shutting down for a couple days and becoming a hermit

- Or -

I deal with failure by ice cream and bounce back shortly after digesting.

 

Say something like that and you likely won't get the job.

I'd say best thing to do is simply omit what you don't want to say, and fill in with sunshiney lies if need be

Its a postmodern world

Fitz has got the answer, tell yourself your own life story, I like it

The kid can be deeper than you might think

 

I've noticed that.
Maybe because most of the posts I have read from him are about 5 words long

 

and perhaps this is why i don't agree with the world the way it is. knowing every detail of someone's childhood is not the way to determine if someone is good for a job. it's a way of profiling. and it's how people who are shitty at their job but fit in with the rest of their co-workers end up working for a company, while highly qualified, hard working people who aren't shiny squeaky perfect cookie cutter members of society end up working in shit jobs for minimum wage, simply because they refuse to compromise who they are (which incidentally makes them REALLY good at their job). sorry, i may be a bit bitter.

 

I agree with you.
I'm bitter too.

 

I don't agree with it either, I haven't worked directly for someone else in 7 years because I don't like BS, but you have to do what you have to do if you want a certain position

 

Po-Mo world no doubt.

Which means that it is more likely that someone who says mind your own fucking business with a smile on their face is more likely to get the job than a liar.

If you can tell a liar and I can tell a liar than everyone can tell a liar.

No one likes the liar, but everyone likes the ballsy. Which is why treehugger is right ... minus the polite.

 

well go ahead and give it a try and report back

I'm a good liar, I would do it for fun, though all you really would have to do is omit what you don't want to talk about

 

Nailed it.

 

the smile is what i meant by polite.

 

Yes. He could have told them that when he was 16 he dreamed about having the job he was now interviewing for.

.

 

A lot of different questions here.

OK first, failure. I can deal with failure in two completely oppsite ways depending on what it is I've failed at. I can be all philosophical, and learn from what I did wrong, or if I made no mistakes but just wasn't good enough, shrug and move on. This is the way I'd like to think I deal with most failures but sometimes...
I get angry, at myself for not trying enough, at the others for not thinking I was good enough, at stupi marking systems that label failure. I will on a good day, exercise away the anger. On a bad day, I might try drowning it in whiskey. It all depends.

As for the life story, wow I have a good 5 years of complete confusion. I can remember everything that happened, but I have no idea of the order it took place in. There are parts of my life I don't like to revisit at all. Maybe I should write my life story(for myself) although I am petrified of what I might diiscover in the process. Sometimes the past should remain just that...the past.

 

I do not know if blowing a second interview would be considered failure. Most people do not get second interviews.

Failure is a final result. I know you are not a quitter. It is not your nature.

You know where you goofed. Be better prepared for those kind of questions on the next interview.

You Might want to do a little reading about NLP. Nero Linguistic Programing.

They use a technique called mirroring to build connection with people quickly. (namely the person interviewing you.)

NLP might offer you several tools.

Sorry about the interview. You will be better prepared next time.

 

It's worth being able to detect the job function of the person who is interviewing you. They don't always tell you.

Usually you can tell the person who would be your immediate boss. They often ask questions that are the most relevant to the tasks you would be performing on the job.

Often there's a higher level business manager that will interview you, someone above the immediate boss. They are often more interested in issues such as productivity and money and not the technical details of your job.

The staff psychologist is easy to detect. They're the ones that try to pick your brain and get into personal issues. They tend to have strange behavior, like being obsessed with following your eyes or fingers all over the place or yelling at you to see your impulse response.

It's important to know who is who. The psychologist usually isn't going to be interested in discussing the technical details of your prospective job, so trying to talk about that with them is probably going to be a waste of time.

.

 

Sorry to hear the interview didn't go as well as you wished it would have. Sometimes I think it's worse thinking that you failed then actually hearing that you didn't get the job. Somebody mentioned profiling as the reason they asked about your past in such detail...I agree completely. Your past is your own business....it's hard to admit your past to even yourself sometimes; it's nonsense that a stranger giving an interview over the telephone should expect that you babble to them about it. Just my two cents, but if they want to know that much information about you before you have the job, are they really the type of company that you would feel comfortable working for?
I wouldn't stress out too much about it though, easier said then done, I know....a job is just a job, an interview is just an interview. eace: