OT Rant, Job interview questions from PC hell

[mike]

Time was when interviews questions were about the job and ones suitability to do it (well usually anyway). Now though we have the joys of PC and smart-arse type questions. A favorite is

What are your best and worst points? Talk about "When did you stop beating your wife" type tactics.

Ok Best points is easy - but asking someone their worst points is of course so loaded as to be a nonsense. If one tells the truth (eg I'm a poor timekeeper for example), might as well not bother to turn up for the interview. And so, in the best traditions of cra* answers one is reduced to things like "I'm too much of a perfectionist". Neat - but I think we all agree - total boll*cks!

Ok rant off. Thanks for reading.

btw, I did mean to ask if anyone has a better answer than the one I cited above about ones "worse points"?

[Andy Hall]

It would really depend on the company, the type of job and what the interviewer is looking for as to whether this question and answer were appropriate or not.

These are fairly standard questions and they, and others like them are designed to elicit a response. The answer itself doesn't particularly matter - what is being looked for is how you handle the situation - in this case being thrown a curved ball.

Taking one extreme, if the job is one of putting widgets in boxes on a production line for 40 hours per week, then that may not be too much of an issue.

However, if it's one involving people skills then it almost certainly is important to know how someone being interviewed will react - i.e. will they keep their cool, think quickly and adaptively and address a situation or get rattled or indecisive?

Having said that, HR departments do seem to have favourite questions that are trotted out whether they are important or not.

[John Rumm]

Lots of options I suppose....

"There are things I am good at, things I am ok at, and there are things I am getting better at"

"I find it very difficult to be non productive" - follow up with an illustration of being asked to "look busy" and keep booking and extra week to a job on a project that you have already finished just to defend the bosses budget for net year.

Deflect it with "I am not really qualified to answer that, you would need to speak to my wife!" (or "your wife" if you want to piss the interviewer off ;-)

"I think people in general spend too much time dwelling on the things they can't do well, but I find it a much more positive and rewarding practice to concentrate on then things I can do. That does not mean I ever stop striving to improve areas I am less good at, but equally I don't carry around a short list of failures that I could recite to you"

"Selling myself at interview"

"Answering self incriminating questions"

"Dealing with amateur psychologists"

"I have no sense of rhythm", "I can't tap dance" etc.

"I feel I am generally cooperative and flexible in my approach to work, so I find it hard to deal with pettiness" i.e. a subtext that reads:

"if I worked 40 mins unpaid overtime a couple of nights in the week because it was much more efficent to finish what I was doing at the time, rather than have to start again the following day, I don't expect to get a bollocking for being 10mins late back from lunch"

(You can tell I don't have the attitude to be a dutiful employee can't you? ;-)

Did I get the job?

[News Groups]

As a perfectionist myself I wouldn't agree that it is total bollocks.

[Andy Hall]

Just remember that once you have reached your goal as a perfectionist, there is only one way left to go.....

[Mike Barnes]

I find it impossible to answer stupid questions.

[dennis]

A true perfectionist never achieves perfection.

[Andrew Gabriel]

When I'm interviewing, my number one criteria is how you will get on with the rest of the team. For my teams to work effectively, they all have to get on with each other very well, and that's actually more important than how technically good you are at your job. Many of these questions are intended to find out what sort of person you are, how you behave when you get pushed out of your comfort zone, etc. As Andy said, the answer is often not as important as how you handle the question.

Nowadays, an interviewer has to be incredibly careful about what questions they ask. So many questions can easily be taken as potentially discriminatory if you aren't careful, although we haven't yet got to the US situation of interviewers being forbidden to ask anything which is not directly job related.

Always answer truthfully. No one wants to employ someone who isn't open and honest, and it's very easy for a skilled interviewer to drill down and find inconsistancies which indicate you aren't being truthful, although you may well be faced with an unskilled interviewer (most are, sadly). Often you can turn negative points around into something positive. Think what the 5 or 10 worse questions you could be asked are. Then for each of them, try to think of an honest answer which turns the negative point into a positive point.

[Bob Mannix]

My favourite quote is from the David Brent 10 top management tips -

"when shortlisting candidates to leave half, take half the applications at random and throw them away...

..no-one wants to employ an unlucky person!"

[Peter Lynch]

I think you'll find that a true perfectionist never achieves anything

[Peter Lynch]

That's a great answer. It's probably true, difficult to prove and utterly irrelevant to the job requirements. Best of all, it's short.

Since interviews are a two-way street[1] presumably you then have the right to ask the company representative what the best and worst aspects of the company are.

Pete

[1] experienced job candidates realise that an important part of an interview is the applicant deciding whether they want to work for the company in question. Obviously being faced with dim-witted interviewers asking stupid questions is a major negative (i.e. you'd want more money).

[Andrew Gabriel]

If you've got so many candidates and you know that in the pile there are going to be many more excellent fits than you have positions for, that's a reansonable approach, as wading through all the applications isn't going to get you a better candidate so you're wasting your time. I've never been in the position of having a large pile of excellent applicants though, and I don't know anyone else who has either.

[nightjar]

I haven't had to be on the receiving end of job interviews for more than 30 years, but British Aerospace asked me that back then. My favourite interview was a group interview for Cadburys, who advertised for production engineers - although they really wanted line supervisors - which lasted three days. It was almost entirely about inter-personal skills.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think I'd probably say 'I have this terrible habit of lying at interveiews' and look them straight in the eye. If they didn't smile I'd walk out then and there..

[The Natural Philosopher]

You obviously haven't been interviewed for a cold calling sales job..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. The problem was usually finding someone who was worth interviewing.

[Huge]

Funny how few people realise this ...

[Huge]

*applause*

[Bob Mannix]

The cultural reference to David Brent was intended to indicate a humorous response, perhaps I should have added the smiley!

[Andy Hall]

Mmmm...

This is a bit like the situation of the frog sitting on a lily leaf in the precise centre of a pond. He decides that he wants to reach the edge, but with each hop can cover only half of the remaining distance.

Does he ever reach the edge?