Ability to Learn and Adapt

In the technology era, the world is moving at an ever faster pace, one needs to adapt to new development and learn new things everyday to keep up with the technology and industry development.

Your ability to learn fast is often more important than what you know. Interviewers will try to get a read on the following:

  • Your willingness to accept ever-changing environments and working styles,
  • Your willingness to learn and
  • Your ability to learn

##  Do Something Completely Unexpected

What is the interviewer looking for: The interviewer is evaluating

  • Your response to the unexpected
  • Your learning from the unexpected to become stronger

Best practice to answer: Use the STAR framework and describe the Situation and the Task. The action you took to resolve it and it’s outcome. Focus on how you responded the unexpected with positive energy, list the research you have done to understand the challenge and the approaches you have identified to solve the problem, the challenges you have faced along the way and the final outcome. Do not forget to mention what you have learned in the journey and how the experience positively impacted your career.

Common pitfalls:

  • Lack of specifics. It is critical to have enough detail to make people believe in your story. Without enough detail, the interviewers may conclude that you have made it up.

  • The unexpected thing in your story should have been expected with people at your experience level. If this is the case, in the interviewer’s mind, she will start to form negative view about you.

Question variations:

  • How do you deal with unexpected tasks and situations at work?

  • Give me an example of when you went into firefighting mode.

  • What happens when you need to change what you are doing at your work?

  • Tell me about a time when you had to assess and work through an unexpected situation in order to get your work done.

What Have You Learned Recently?

Detail Question: What is the last thing you learned about xxx from a book, magazine or website?

What is the interviewer looking for: The interviewer is assessing your zest to remain updated in the ever-changing world.

Best practice to answer: Have the list of your favorite books and your key takeaway from these books, your websites, apps, blogs or podcast and why you like them. Sure, you should answer what you have learned, but more importantly, go the extra mile to comment on related books or podcasts to show that you are active at learning and getting informed.

Common pitfalls:

  • Unable to articulate one thing that you have learned recently. It is always a good practice to pay extra attention to the news while you are heading to interviews since some news topic may come up in the interview.

  • Unable to even name a few books, blogs, or podcasts. This only shows you are closed and probably not well informed by the new development in the industry.

  • Mentioning something that is very mundane or you are expected to know.

Question variations:

  • How do you stay current with your knowledge?
  • What is the most innovative thing you’ve read this year?
  • Who is your favorite author? What is your favorite book?
  • Give an example where you learned something really quick.

Failure Experience

What is the interviewer looking for: The interviewer is evaluating

  • Your journey of handling obstacles
  • Critical thinking ability to analyze when you failed
  • Your ability to learn from failure or setbacks

Best practice to answer: Choose a failure where you can tell a story. It needs to be very specific. Define what the failure meant to you. Describe the situation, and explain why it was a challenge. Then mention the actions you took and the outcome. Finally, sum it up with the learnings from the failure that make you a stronger individual.

Common pitfalls:

  • Answer that you haven’t failed or chosen an insignificant failure: Come on, let us face it. We are all human beings. Each of us must have experienced some failure, catastrophic or not. A failure that had a significant impact on you due to your actions is a good example. An insignificant example will only lead the interviewer to think you are not genuine or do not have considerable life experience.

  • Lack of specifics. The interviewers may conclude that you have made it up. Please see the STAR framework.

  • Too much detail: Try not setting up the ground for too long and come to the gist. Too much detail will give the impression that you are not concise.

  • Missed what you have learned: You get overly excited or emotional about your experience and forget to sum up what you have learned and how this experience helped your personal development.

Question variations:

  • How do you learn from failures?
  • How do you handle failures?