And you have a good chance of being the first person they call if another position opens up. And, if not, of being spoken of kindly by managers who network. This wasn’t a waste of time at all.
Jeez, really? In five years and five hours, you’ll be in your hotel room praying to the porcelain Pele.
Me: Actually trying to answer ridiculous canned interview questions with a snide comment. Ooops! There, I did it again! drat
Cheers lovelies. I know I didn’t really fail I suppose, I realise there’s a stronger candidate pool out there, those with full cv’s and brighter less forced cheery dispositions. They’re probably not faking it as much as I am or need to. It’s exhausting, since doing all this have become low, started off looking for work in a stable mood. Excited even. Now just deflated. Can’t see myself working any more than part time for the foreseeable future not unless an increase in med dosage.
Things to do - stop consuming sugar, stop consuming caffeine. Notorious for making things go off kilter even just a bit.
As an interviewer, we’re not really looking at what your specific answer will be, we know its going to be bullshit. What we care about is if you prepared for a very standard question and if you’ll be caught off guard by mundane things. If you can’t BS your way out of this question, its a point against you
I disapprove of this justification.
Fully automated luxury communism now.
Until then, I got a job! It’s four hours a week, perfect, I haven’t worked for six years and need to reintegrate myself slowly.
Why?
(Forgive me butting in)
I saw this happen, and it was painful to watch. Incredibly well-qualified candidate had no answer to “what is your weakness” question. She was iced, on grounds of failing to prepare for something totally predictable. I mean, come on… TRY. “My weakness is that I work too hard, I care too much.” Anything is better than nothing.
Congrats! 
“I have terrible handwriting, which forced me to learn Word Processing skills.” Or something like that. Make it true, make it real, then show how you turned it around.
Thanks!
Because that makes it a meta-question, which is even harder to answer “correctly”, and is like a trick. Who wants to be tricked at a vulnerable time like an interview? Why should I trust anyone at your company if these are your tactics with your employees?
It’s nonsense. Stop doing it. Ask genuine questions that actually matter about the prospective role.
Hey, congrats!
::whew:: I’m relieved… it was tough trying to get work done with my fingers crossed for you!
“I see myself cruisin’ down the freeway in a sweet convertible, with two topless chicks in the back, and jamming to the stones on my electric guitar.”
Then hold your hand up for a fist bump. Keep it there until you get bumped.
See that, to me, just stinks of “I spent two minutes before the interview coming up with some lame answer that doesn’t really incriminate me and hopefully makes me sound good.” It doesn’t tell me anything about you, other than that you’ve been to enough job interviews to know to prepare for that question.
As for the ‘it shows the interviewee has prepared’ theory, I disagree. If I want to know if a candidate has prepared for the interview, I’ll take note of their dress (is it appropriate?), their timing (anyone that turns up late for an interview is an automatic fail, unless they have a really good reason. I don’t care if you got lost/stuck in traffic on the way. You didn’t prepare.), I’ll ask them a few basic questions about the company (easy to find out on google these days) and so on. That tells me so much more than the fact that they can glibly spout some BS in response to questions that (almost) everyone knows about.
You don’t find the value of something that tests how you would arrive at a solution rather than just the solution itself? From my perspective, there are things we need to know about a candidate that’s difficult to just come out and ask. The most efficient and effective way of finding that out is to ask questions like this. Would you agree that if I really wanted to know what your weakness is, that you’d be a terrible person to ask?
I disagree that its a trick. Since there’s almost no wrong answer, what you give won’t be used against you. Its a win-win as long as you show you are prepared. Preparation for a job interview is almost as important as the interview itself. If you cannot show that you want the job enough to prepare for it, if you come in dressed like a slob, or had evasive or pointless answers to questions, if you don’t even know why you want the job except that its available, why should I expect any different if you were my employee?
Everyone going for an interview should be able to answer a few basic questions. By this time, you should either know or be able to google what they are. Things like:
- Strength/weakness
- Why do you want this job?
- Where do you see yourself in X years?
- Tell me about yourself
- Why should I hire you?
These things help because they show a level of preparedness that would probably translate to actually doing the job if hired. It shows that even if you disagree with it, you can at least play the game, you won’t embarrass the company by going off on it, it shows self-control, and it can show how much you’re willing to research a topic and/or how well you can anticipate what your boss wants. You may think of it as trickery, but in every job, there’s going to be times when you don’t want to do what you’re told to do. When that happens, are you going to throw a tantrum and refuse or are you going to play the game like everyone else? How do we ensure an honest answer to this question if we don’t ask you indirectly? Who would actually say they would refuse to play ball if challenged?
Many of the jobs I’ve had to interview candidates for are more general, entry level positions. There’s no good way to ask someone how much they like typing memos or working spreadsheets or fiddling with power point. The job could involve all that or none, clerical positions are very random. So we can only have a few questions about the actual job but most of them are easily bullshitted by the candidate. How would you interview someone like that?
Then what’s your answer? It’s so very easy to knock someone else answer, it’s harder to come up with a better one.
I’m not knocking your answer - as these things go, it’s a pretty good response - I’m saying that the question itself will never yield any particularly useful answers. Anybody that knows what they’re doing will be able to come up with a similar canned response that doesn’t tell me anything about them.
So, it’s a good answer to a bad question.
But since you asked so nicely, my answer would be along the lines of ‘I used to have a bit of a problem with scheduling and getting things done in a timely manner. So in recent years, I’ve become quite disciplined about creating a task list at the beginning of the day to make sure everything is dealt with appropriately and according to priority.’.
That’s complete BS of course, but doesn’t it sound good?
Wouldn’t you agree that employers would be looking for someone who knows what they’re doing? If anything, it at least weeds out the very worst ones. That’s why the question remains in there