“The Repeated Failure” Interview Question: Spotting True Resilience in Sales Hires

Introduction: Why Standard Interview Questions Do Not Show Candidates' Resilience?

Almost any candidate is good at performing well during an interview. Candidates know how to answer questions in a way to make the impression on the employer, talk about their achievements and experience. In short, the picture seems to be perfect, but in reality, when such a candidate enters a sales environment full of rejections and stressful situations, they fail.

The reason for that is in the method used in the interviews. Traditional interview questions aim to show candidates' success stories rather than their behavior during stressful situations. Therefore, the recruiter is not able to understand one crucial personality trait of a sales professional their resilience.

Resilience is essential for any candidate involved in cold calling, as it affects their ability to remain consistent and persistent in their work. However, resilience is difficult to assess using the standard methods.

The Reason Why Resilience is the #1 Factor in Predicting Success in Sales

It is not all about skills. It is all about resilience in this role. Every day, an SDR encounters several rejections, sometimes even within one hour. People ignore emails, miss phone calls, and abruptly terminate conversations.

Thus, when assessing sales candidates, it is essential to remember that even those who have knowledge of selling techniques and tools will show poorer results without resilience.

Resilience makes the difference since it enables a sales representative to stay consistent and bounce back from obstacles to keep on working according to the plan.

As for the costs related to such candidates' hiring, they include burnout, inconsistency, and a higher turnover rate.

That is why finding a resilient candidate during interviews is crucial.

Flaws in Using Traditional Interview Questions

Conventional interviews use standard questions. Applicants are expected to speak about their strengths, accomplishments, or situations where they excelled. Such an approach promotes pre-planned answers that focus only on the positive aspects.

While failure is one of the topics covered during an interview, it often lacks depth. Questioning candidates by saying "tell me about a failure" is too simple. People can easily think about any insignificant flaw and explain it positively, avoiding mentioning difficulties.

What is more, most people tend to blame someone else for problems that occurred. It is possible to mention that team performance was poor due to certain external conditions. Thus, a candidate cannot be assessed objectively.

For these reasons, conventional questions do not help to understand applicants' real behavior. This problem can be solved by using the "failure" interview question.

Introduction to the “Repeated Failure Interview Question”

The repetition of failures interview question is very straightforward yet extremely powerful. Instead of asking about one mistake, this question encourages candidates to talk about their experiences of having faced numerous failures while trying to complete an important task.

This particular interview question turns the entire conversation upside down. Rather than allowing candidates to come up with some minor or occasional mistakes, it obliges them to discuss more difficult situations that lasted for quite a long period of time.

In essence, this question aims to reveal the behavioral patterns. It shows what people do once their problems start recurring and do not seem to get resolved any time soon.

Asking the Question Effectively

The repeated failure interview question requires being asked in an efficient way to extract the maximum amount of information from candidates. The question should look like this:

"Tell me about a situation when you were failing repeatedly with some project. What did you do next?"

This is just an introduction for recruiters. They will need to ask follow-up questions, such as what the applicant changed due to this situation, what they learned from that experience, and what actions they would do differently if the same situation occurs today.

It is vital to ensure that the applicant feels comfortable talking about their repeated failures. They should not be afraid to talk about these situations to avoid negative judgment on their side.

The repeated failure interview question can become one of the best interview moments with appropriate asking techniques.

Traits of a Great Answer

A good response to an interview question regarding past failures involves certain traits.

For starters, it displays ownership. Top-notch high-potential candidates always own up to their mistakes without blaming other people. They look into themselves to try to figure out where things went wrong.

Secondly, it demonstrates a change in the process. It is always important for the candidates who have great potential to share their experience of changing their approaches each time after failure.

Thirdly, it shows maturity and resilience. It means that even though the candidate realizes how tough the situation was, he is still determined to keep getting better at sales.

Red Flags to Look Out for

However, not all answers will point to resilience. Some red flags to watch out for include:

First, pointing fingers at other people is a red flag to look out for. Recruits who blame others for their failures lack accountability.

Second, recruiters should look out for generic or vague answers. Candidates who cannot provide specific details might not have reflected on their experiences or are just bluffing.

Third, candidates who speak of their repeated failures without describing how they learned from them would not adapt well to a job in sales.

Lastly, candidates who shy away from accountability could be struggling with dealing with rejection in a high-rejection environment.

Real Example: Strong vs Weak Candidate Responses

Let us imagine two candidates providing an answer to the identical question:

Weak answer: "My problem was that I could not cope with the task since my team did not support me in this situation. However, eventually everything worked out fine." There is a lack of details here, as well as an absence of any personal accountability or reflection on the experience gained.

A strong answer could be: "There were some problems during those months, as I could not reach my objectives for some time. In order to change something, I kept doing things in the same way. Nonetheless, upon reevaluating my strategy, I understood that I needed to modify my message and experiment with different approaches."

Obviously, there is a substantial difference between these two answers.

Resilience Scoring during Interviews

As part of an effort to ensure fairness and efficiency in the assessment process, a scoring system can be applied by the recruiter.

The criteria for assessing resilience can be three elements: ownership, learning, and persistence. These elements can be scored from one to five.

Ownership reflects the level of personal accountability shown by the candidate. Learning indicates whether the person has learned from their mistakes. Persistence shows how tenacious the candidate was when faced with difficulties.

In that case, a good candidate will be able to show high scores in all these areas. As a result, the question about repeated failures becomes both revealing and measurable.

Including This Interview Question in Your Hiring Process

The failed experience interview question should be a crucial element in your hiring process, rather than something you think about including at the last minute. This question can be asked either in the preliminary stage or even in the advanced stages through behavioral interviewing techniques.

While the recruiter and the hiring manager can both ask this question, it is particularly useful to do so in advanced stages for assessing candidates.

In addition, this question must be asked together with other methods of testing and interviewing, such as through practical assessments using role-playing techniques.

By doing so, you will have a full evaluation of the candidate.

Conclusion: Stop Interviewing for Perfect Responses; Start Interviewing for Real Behavior

Sales excellence is not about providing perfect responses. Rather, it is about being resilient, flexible, and persistent when confronted with obstacles.

The repeated failure interview question highlights the actual behavior of the interviewee. This interview question helps understand how interviewees' minds work and how they learn and improve upon encountering setbacks.

As a position that requires dealing with rejections day after day, this information is critical. Recruiters can select interviewees who will succeed, not merely exist, in challenging conditions.

In summary, make sure to change your approach to interviewing. Ask more effective questions. Look for actual behavior and not merely outstanding performance.

If the repeated failure interview question is used correctly, your organization is one step closer to assembling an Apex Hunter sales team.