Who can laugh about life's failures? Successful job candidates, that's who

The Wall Street Journal's Melissa Korn has a fascinating article this week about U.S. colleges' newest crusade: a slightly frantic effort to teach students that an occasional failure is not a catastrophe. That bad grade? Laugh it off. That relationship gone sour? Write about it on a display board called "Best Fail Ever."

The goal of these exercises, of course, is to make a debilitating fear of failure go away. As they say inside one of America's most competitive companies, nobody makes a good decision when being chased by a tiger. Lower the stress level in any situation -- whether it's a college classroom, a job or a romantic dinner -- and everything tends to go better.

Yet it's much easier to recommend serenity than to embrace it. Setbacks sting, especially in the last years of adolescence and the first years of adulthood. During those years, everything is changing so fast and we're not at all certain of what lies ahead. In the words of Aaron Ostler, a 19-year-old biology major at Florida State University, classmates feel that "if they do almost anything wrong, they've done everything wrong."

Meanwhile, what do employers care about? Ah, that's where students and career starters often encounter their most baffling surprise.

We've settled into a hiring and job-interviewing cadence in which it's good to be the candidate who owns up to a few stumbles along the way. "Tell me about a time you had to overcome adversity" is standard fare in many interviews today. So is "Tell me about your greatest weakness." Woe unto the candidate who replies: "I've erased all my weaknesses -- and what an ordeal that's been."

Confront any of these failure-centric questions, and there's a way to turn them to your advantage. Own up to a small but believable shortcoming or stumble. Make sure it isn't devastating to your candidacy. (A sports injury is excellent. A near-fatal drug overdose is not.) Then talk about how you're fixing it. If you can explain how you turn temporary failures into lasting triumphs, you've won.

Being able to spin your own resiliency story, however, isn't something that comes easily to career starters -- especially ones who've come a long way just to be in college. Bear in mind that the key to any resilience story is the ability to portray failure as transient. It's just a hiccup on the road to greater successes.

At 19, or 22, such insouciance doesn't come easily. Today's C-minus on an organic chemistry midterm can seem like the first broken window as a hurricane sweeps toward your home. It's easy to regard that first stumble as a harbinger of much worse news ahead, that will end only when your house, or your dreams of med school, are completely crushed.

How do we break this cycle of anxiety? Sending students the message that "failure is okay" is well-intentioned, but it's slightly misguided. The stronger message is that "failure is temporary." With hard work, the crummy midterm grade can be offset with a strong showing on the final. Doomed relationships will give way to healthy ones. It takes time -- but students and career starters don't need to get everything fixed at once. There's always more time available.

Don't just take my word for it. There's a sweet, poignant site on the Internet called www.rejected.us, which chronicles the setbacks -- and triumphs -- of many dozens of software engineers. Their stories are proud, defiant and funny. One favorite: "Got rejected by Google and within a few months was working there as a contractor. Later one of my projects was used in their recruiting ads as the kind of awesome work you can do at Google."

Comebacks do happen. If you've prevailed in the face of doubters -- or even if you just want to add a few words of encouragement for others reading this Series -- it would be great to get your perspective in the comments section below.