“An Inspired Answer at a Job Interview,” Liahona, October 2017
An Inspired Answer at a Job Interview
By Gibrair Padilha Dos Santos
São Paulo, Brazil
Illustration from Getty Images
After I was assigned to lead a stake self-reliance committee, I realized that I was underemployed myself. With this realization, I desired more from my professional life.
I felt a renewed desire to find a better job and asked for help to write a professional résumé. I sent my new résumé to several businesses and was soon called for interviews.
At one, the interviewer pointed out a line on my résumé that mentioned my work as a counselor in the stake presidency and asked, “Could you tell me in five seconds what this church service means?”
I said that I was in the leadership of an organization responsible for the guidance and welfare of more than 2,500 people. The interviewer became interested and said, “You have one minute to decide how to give me a five-second response to this question: how do you guide those 2,500 people?”
I knew that this would be the defining moment in the interview. I prayed and asked my Heavenly Father for help and quickly remembered the lessons I had learned from the self-reliance group. I felt a surge of confidence.
After one minute, the interviewer asked, “How do you guide those 2,500 people?”
“We help them establish goals,” I answered.
The interviewer stood, shook my hand, and said, “You’re hired.”
It is amazing how God took my hand and answered my prayer. I am grateful to my Savior for inspiring our leaders to create the self-reliance initiative. I have been personally blessed by it, and I have seen the simple, inspired processes of the self-reliance initiative bless many others in our stake. I am so convinced of the ability of self-reliance principles to lift lives that when I became a leader over 15 employees in my new job, I began teaching them the principles of self-reliance.
I have grown and I am more capable than I thought I could be. I now earn a salary that sustains me and my family. This initiative helps us improve each day by helping us find greater self-reliance.