"What is your greatest weakness?"

[nancylebov]

A substantial discussion of one of the more annoying interview questions. It ranges from suggestions like "kryptonite" to whether giving the standard "strength as weakness" answer at least shows that the interviewee has done enough research to show that they qualify for a low-level job.

I'm guessing on this, (I hire people now and then, but I don't really interview) but I think you could probably find out a lot of what you want to know by asking people what they were doing at their past job or three and their areas of qualification.

What are the most sensible interview questions you've been asked?

Comments

[firecat]

I'm an editor, and I recall an interview where I was asked to describe what I did when an author refused to accept my edits. Every time I answered, they responded "And then what did you do?" I finally explained that there was only so much you could do because the author has final authority over some things. They seemed to be looking for that answer, and/or to be looking at whether I felt very upset by the situation (which I didn't).

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

As readers of sturgeonslawyer know, I'm currently Looking, and I've had some real beauts. One interviewer asked me, "How do you handle it when you know you're going to do something that's going to make some people angry?" That took me for a loop. Another asked, in regard to classroom training, "What do you do about students who don't want to be there?"

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing on this, (I hire people now and then, but I don't really interview) but I think you could probably find out a lot of what you want to know by asking people what they were doing at their past job or three and their areas of qualification.

You guess well. My current company (http://www.redhat.com) uses a rigorous implementation of this system called Targeted Selection (R) (http://www.ddiworld.com/products_services/targetedselection.asp). It requires that companies figure out in advance the qualities that they seek in a potential employee and devise a set of questions to determine these based on the candidate's actual experience. Interviewers are assigned subsets of this list to discuss with the candidate. This prevents the typical rehash of some questions from interviewer to interviewer.

At first I thought the system was stilted and hokey, but after going through the mandatory training (i.e. mandatory if you're going to be conducting interviews) I came away impressed.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That sounds reasonable--I was thinking about something more open-ended, with a lot of the intent being to find out whether the interviewee was interested in their work and paid attention to the larger context and such.

The one thing that seems difficult to find out is whether an employee who'd had a bad time in a previous job had been in a bad situation or was someone who'd have trouble with any job whatsoever.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

Well, believe it or not, "Describe your weakness" is a subset of my ideal question, which is anything that will allow me to let the interviewer know the best way to use me: short tasks rather than huge projects, and I deal with technology somewhat better than I do with people. I don't work well over the phone, but in-person I do well. That sort of thing. I finish up by saying I hate to be bored. The best managers I ever had caught on, had just the place for me, and didn't want me to leave when the time came to part.