Having been turned down for jobs because I was honest on questions like this, I can’t say I’m sympathetic to the eye-rolling problem.
Of course, given definitions #'s 5 & 6, the OP could express the desire to sing with better timbre and have better dipthongs.
If your name is Ralph, you could put down the desire to be better at keeping Dr. Quatt away from your wife’s knickers.
I don’t have an eye-rolling problem. I am giving a heads up that some answers could conceivably cause the applicant an eye-rolling problem.
Did an interviewer tell you, “We are turning you down because you answered this question wrong?” I ask only because we never tell people why we aren’t hiring them. I thought it would be rare.
Yes, I have.
Well, that sounds pretty unprofessional on their part.
In all fairness, my response was a joke. However, I think a question like this, on a job application, is a not something to be taken seriously.
The leadership skills, is just another answer where the applicant is trying to firgure what answer the employer wants to hear, not the ‘truth’.
I don’t think it’s a good question for a prospective employer to ask, but the OP wants the job so he needs to take it seriously enough, you know? It feels sometimes like people catch flak on here for things that aren’t in their control, things like job applications, where you don’t get to say, “This is a stupid question.” It is a stupid question, but it’s the question he has to answer in order to get the job he wants.
Thanks for your posts jsgoddess … the only thing I would correct is that I am a “she”. 
I appreciate the serious answers this thread has received. As stated in the OP, this company has an amazing reputation; I would happily lick their floors clean if they asked me to, if it would help me get a job there.
As an HR person, here’s what I think would make up a good answer. I do not recommend using it if it isn’t true, however. Your application should reflect that you are excellent at the accounting job you want. For example, “attention to detail” or “integrity” would NOT be good answers. I think you know that!
But perhaps you have never worked for a consulting firm before. Consultants are big on customer relationships, strategic thinking, marketing their professional skills, presentation skills, etc. These are things that working at a consulting firm would give you more opportunity to develop than a job at an aerospace or snack food firm would. Therefore, they would be good answers to the question.
Be prepared to elaborate on your answer, such as how you’d use those skills in your job, what level of skill you currently have, etc.
Damn it! I knew that! Gah.
I don’t really think it’s unprofessional to say that; however, I do consider it unprofessional to ask such a question and expect a serious answer. If a person is not hired on the basis of such a question, even to a small extent, then if the person asks why she was not hired, she should be told the reasons. If the question isn’t a criterion for hiring, then it shouldn’t be asked.
Regardless, the question is out of line anyway, because it assumes a person’s traits are all work related, which is simply not reasonable. If, say, a person had been molested as a child and had an ingrained prejudice against whatever demographic the offender belonged to, then wanting to work through that prejudice is none of the employers business. The applicant is now in the position of refusing to answer, giving up information which the employer has no moral justification to ask for, or simply lying.
That example may be extreme; however, it should be obvious that there are myriad aspects of one’s person that is not something the employer has any business asking about. I’m shy with women, in terms potential romantic relationships (not professionally or in terms of friendship) and at this stage of my life, that would probably top the list of traits I’d like to improve on. Any future boss has no business asking me to reveal that in a job interview. So, if I go job hunting, and if I am presented with that question, what do I do?
Do I lie?
Do I tell the interviewer to butt out?
Or do I reveal something personal and unrelated to work?
Well, I lie. And since I’m lying about what I most want to change about myself, I’m not going to expose myself on the basis of a lie I’ve been forced into telling.
Another problem to be borne in mind is the fact that subjective judgments about a personal trait, even if it is work related, are far too poorly calibrated to be useful. I see myself as being semi-literate when it comes to computers; however, almost everybody I work with consider me to be knowledgeable with the contraptions. I think I’m bad at math, but (with some review) I could set up and solve a LaGrangian. I think I’m bad with people on the telephone, yet people imitate my telephone manners because they find them so charming. (I’ve left a string of people who now say “my pleasure” in response to a thanks.)
How is an employer possibly going to judge something for which there is virtually no possible way to functionally calibrate?
Given the terribly low correspondence between interviewing performance and job success, it’s a pretty silly question any way. Bear in mind that my sister has an MBA specialized in HR, has been an HR professional for something like 15 years, and aggressively seeks out new methods, theories, techniques, and knowledge to be better at her job. She extimates the correlation between interviewing and job success to be about 0.3.
IMHO, of course.
This isn’t an interview question - as I stated, it’s a question on a job application. There are four questions, each with four parts.
I assume they are looking for not only the content of one’s answer, but how it is expressed.
Thanks again to jsgoddess and Harriet the Spry