"A time I failed" Interview Question

[summerlennox]

I was thinking about talking about how I had a best friend when I got to college (at a different school), but our friendship dissolved because of me. She was an athlete, and I wasn't very supportive because I wanted her to give me a lot of attention with her very limited time. As time passed, she eventually stopped talking to me. I realized that I wasn't an understanding friend and I lacked emotional empathy to understand that she had a lot of pressure being an athlete at her school, and as a result, she no longer wanted to be friends with me. I grew from this experience because I learned what it meant to have great communication and listening skills to people, whether it's your friends, classmates, or, in the future, patients. Moving forward, I was able to have better friendships because I was a better listener and I was able to better understand what was being said to me.

Please be honest and tell if this sucks or not. This was the only thing I could think of outside of anything academically related.

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[Goro]

This question is used to weed out people who cannot think beyond their academics.

Go with the vollyball

 

[summerlennox]

This question is used to weed out people who cannot think beyond their academics.

Go with the vollyball

I made an edit to the post, I was wondering if you could review it, please?

 

[Med Ed]

I made an edit to the post, I was wondering if you could review it, please?

I would... go back to volleyball here.

There are several possible uses of this question. One is to identify people who have (or haven't) taken risks. The other is to see how people respond to failure, which is an inevitable fact of life. I personally don't mind if the example involves academics, it's just that failing to get an A in a given course is not very compelling. Now, if you were put in charge of a group project and your poor leadership caused the whole thing to devolve, that's a more interesting story. It also allows for more introspection.

You should really stick to something that is relatively concise and concrete. Like volleyball.