Articles
Media »
Videos
Podcasts
Interviews
Columns
Blogs
Books
Webinars
Conferences
Think-On-Your-Feet Interview Questions
April 13, 2009 – 3:51 pmSo, what’s your greatest weakness?
 |
| Funny, the person whose job you’re replacing–who takes three-hour lunch breaks–also said her greatest weakness was that she’s a workaholic. |
Gah! That infernal interview question.
Perhaps human resources professionals ask about job candidates’ weaknesses to see if the interviewee can think on his or her feet.
But as punkrockhr.com duly notes in a blog entry inquiring if human resources professionals ask about job candidate weaknesses, the interviewee often comes to the job interview prepared with rehearsed answers to this very question. Answers such as: “I work too hard” or “I care too much.”
Yeah, right.
Of course the job candidate isn’t going to come out and say “I tend to stare off into space after lunch until I get to go home,” or “I don’t work well with others because everyone besides me is an arrogant idiot,” or “I can’t work near the payroll office because I have an affinity towards embezzlement.”
That would be too easy.
There must be original questions out there that the human resources professional can ask the job candidate that would yield telling (or as equally arbitrary) answers.
In fact, I was nice enough to come up with a list for you.
Think-On-Your-Feet Interview Questions
1. If you could only take one thing for lunch the rest of your life, what would you bring?
2. What would your theme song be?
3. Who would win in a fight–Megatron, Indiana Jones, or Bono?
4. If the office was on fire, who or what would you save, and why?
5. It’s a little suspicious that the office building, which has never been on fire before, went up in flames soon after you started. Care to comment?
So do you still ask job candidates during interviews what their greatest weaknesses are? Why or why not? What are some of the other questions you ask?
And, as for me, what are my greatest weaknesses?
French fries, long-haired acoustic guitar players, and kryptonite.
Jessica Livingston
Managing Editor
jessica.livingston@e-bim.com
2 Responses to “Think-On-Your-Feet Interview Questions”
I am going to answer two ways. One for the question you should be asking and then spin it around on how you should answer the question.
I have build an interviewing model around 5 questions and one of the question deals with strengths and weaknesses but is slightly different.
The question is how would you rank yourself as a (fill in the blank on a scale of 0-10)?Second part of the question what makes you that number?
Third part of the question if they say they are an 8 what would it take for you to become a 9? Not asking for weaknesses asking what it take to get better.
Now for the applicant who is asked about weaknesses I would answer? Do you mind if I change the question a little bit and tell you what I am working on to make myself better?
Now you have put a positive spin on a negative question.
Hope this helps.
By Mel Kleiman on May 22, 2009
well point taken, but it will not be sufficient for an interview specially when we are hiring at a senior level.
any seasoned professional HR interviewer need to understand how to read between the lines rather then reading the lines itself.
nothing wrong in asking what are your strenghts / weaknesses but the understanding should not stop at that but more thorough understanding be giving situational cases or asking them to explain a instance why they carry that opinion and infer from there.
these were my two cents in addition to the article.
Rgds,
By Partha on Apr 6, 2010