Better yet, you should tell them that their answers are “not even wrong” and leave them to figure out what that even means.
Stranger
To be clear, when I said it was unanswerable, I meant in a way that was truthful and relevant to the job / interview. Of course it’s easy to vomit out a BS answer, but BS isn’t going to give you much in the way of useful information.
As I said, weakness is a matter of perspective. A true honest answer from me could be any number of things like “I’d make a lousy IT specialist” or “math bores me” or “my heart would be broken too easily by losing a patient.” But I don’t bring these up in interviews, because I don’t pursue jobs where my weaknesses would have an impact on my ability to to the job. I DON’T work in IT, accounting, or medicine. So bringing it up is not relevant, and I can’t imagine the interviewer would care.
It might be amusing to try this if I’m ever asked this question again, though. “I really don’t understand anything about computer network infrastructure, so I resolved the issue by never pursuing an IT career.”
Yep, and the “greatest” part is always going to be a matter of perspective too. As I said upthread, some people dislike my direct communication style. These people would see it as a weakness, perhaps my “greatest” weakness, especially since I’m just fine with it, I like getting information in as few steps as possible, and I have no intention of changing it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a strength.
For that matter, I don’t think of the ability to concentrate on the project at hand even amidst distractions as a weakness. I often hyper-focus too. I do my best work that way, and it’s often a vital skill when shoved in a cube farm with people having conversations one aisle over.
In other words, you’re fishing for prepared BS answers, much like with the weakness question. Where I want to go in my career is to keep making money. My long term interest is to have a job that’s not too bad (I don’t expect ‘good’) and keeps paying money, I don’t really give a crap about ‘career progression’ or really anything other than ‘how much is the job paying me and is it not too painful going into work’. In my experience, the vast majority of people have something like this as a ‘five year goal’, but management culture is such that you should never admit it in an interview. There’s this idea that most people are really into their job, when the reality is that most people work because it’s how you pay for the stuff you actually want to do.
Not everyone has the exclusive ambition to just make good many and don’t consider or care about developing career aspirations and goals. msmith537 appears to be selecting for people who have sufficient desire to either build a career or be good enough at faking it (which are pretty much one and the same), and the question also serves as a competency test to see how well someone understands to corporate conslutancy business and can reiterate the kind of patter that is expected in the client relation environment. In that context it isn’t a boilerplate question even if you expect the candidate may not give an entirely open and honest response.
Stranger
Yeah, in msmith537’s job it’s the kind of thing that’s about as required as “not agoraphobic” for sailors in submarines. Asking the same question of someone looking to work in the production line at a factory would be completely stupid, but that’s not the kind of people and jobs msmith537 deals with.
I’m currently “looking to develop my management skills” and “working towards a PMI certification”. My last manager was perfectly happy with the first and understood it to mean “I can delegate management tasks to her” (the second didn’t become true until partway through that project); I’ve had others who would have felt threatened. I don’t think msmith537 would have felt threatened…
Then a job with a management consultancy may not be for you. If you are just about the money, there are other professions that pay as well or better (although we do get paid decently). It can also be very demanding in terms of travel and hours so I like to make sure potential candidates understand that. It’s also a people business. You have to work with colleagues and clients and people at the client sites who may resent your presence. So an “I’m just here to do my job and go home” attitude won’t fly. But people get into the industry because they like the variety, challenge and professional opportunities it provides.
Exactly. I’m interviewing MBAs and Ivy League grads. Not that we don’t sometimes hate our job like everyone else, but these are typically highly motivated, smart people who can work wherever they want.
I mean don’t get me wrong. A lot of the interviewing process is subjective BS (how many tennis balls can you fit in a 747?). But I’ve been doing this long enough that I have a pretty good idea of who will be successful at it.
Inflated, or deflated?