
How to Tackle Three of the Toughest Interview Questions - yogrish
http://lifehacker.com/5971473/how-to-tackle-three-of-the-toughest-interview-questions
======
JackWebbHeller
"Tell me about one of your weaknesses..."

At this point, hand the interviewer a card you had pre-prepared, which reads
"My over-preparation sometimes comes across as arrogance".

~~~
johnbellone
I hate this question. I've only heard it from management types, and it irks me
because any answer that someone gives is always bullshit. I think its the
question that they gauge to see if you can play the political/communication
game that big corporations want.

Then again the last time I heard that question I didn't get offered a job. So
maybe there's something to hearing it.

~~~
msluyter
I don't think the weakness question has much to do with your actual
weaknesses. It a) tests whether a candidate has minimally prepared for the
interview (if they stumble over this question, then the answer is "no.") and
b) whether they're socially/emotionally sophisticated enough to finesse the
question.

Think of it as sort of a game. You may think (as I do) that the game is
basically bullshit, but _something_ is in fact being measured by the question,
even if it's only how well you play this particular game. And, to be fair, I
imagine that if you're good at this game, you'll be good at other useful games
(bullshitting, negotiating, etc...)

~~~
philwelch
Yup, it's a good question for bullshitters and negotiators, and there's plenty
of demand for both, but for those of us in the substance-based professions,
it's a terrible question.

~~~
DanBC
What happens if you answer reasonably honestly?

"I don't know any COBOL and I've never done anything in ADA. My C isn't as
strong as I'd like it to be, but -as I mention on my resumé- I'm working in
some open source projects bug fixing to get it stronger."

------
philwelch
I'm so glad to work in a field with technical interviews. I can't imagine
having to deal with coming up with a clever new spin on "tell me about your
work history" or "what's your greatest weakness" to stand out from the crowd--
though I've resolved never to take the latter question seriously.

~~~
lrobb
Those are actually good questions.

The work history serves as a nice interview warmup and is a good gauge of a
candidate's ability to communicate. A bad answer is to mumble out what's on
paper in front of you. A good answer will reframe the question in terms of
what the job ad described.

The weakness question tells me how introspective you are. Someone aiming at
self mastery that has a big picture view is going to give a vastly different
answer than someone fresh out of school that's read an advice column and
thinks they're a rock star.

~~~
philwelch
The work history question is a valid one, because there are some things that
are better to communicate in a conversation rather than on a resume. But at
least half of the onus is on the interviewer to make it a conversation rather
than expecting the candidate to try and turn it into some kind of egotistical
sales pitch. I'm glad I spent more time preparing for questions about
algorithms than I did figuring out how to spin my work history.

"What's your greatest weakness" is an awful question. As a candidate, you
never really know what the interviewer's angle with that question is. Almost
no candidate will answer it with complete honesty, just like a wife asking her
husband "does this make me look fat?", and for the same reason--any answer
you'll give will be used against you, with only a vague, remote chance that
it'll help you at all. It's also lazy and arrogant on the part of the
interviewer, since it implies that instead of actually probing the candidate's
expertise and skill and history for weaknesses, they're going to sit back and
let you volunteer something and save them the effort. There are less
adversarial ways to probe for a candidate's point of view on their own
development.

There are exceptions for these rules. For instance, if you're hiring salesmen
or spin doctors, you can ask just about any question and see if they try and
turn it into a sales pitch for themselves. Likewise, if you're hiring someone
into a position that involves negotiation, watching how they game their way
through the "what's your greatest weakness" question could be instructive. For
my part, I'm glad my field has actual technical substance that I can be
interviewed about.

Finally, there are a lot of unspoken cultural assumptions with these kinds of
questions as well, especially with regards to selling yourself. Americans sell
themselves--other cultures don't necessarily. This might be another difference
between engineers and the rest of the workforce. Engineers are far more
scarce, and you're forced to pull from a global candidate pool, or at least
from a local candidate pool that's already pulled in lots of immigrants. In
other fields, it doesn't actually hurt you to have more implicit biases in
favor of American candidates because there are plenty of American candidates.

~~~
lrobb
Well, around here you need more than just technical skills to get a job. As
always YMMV.

~~~
philwelch
That wasn't even my point. My point was that it's good to be able to treat the
work history question as a normal question rather than having to try and
_compete_ on my ability to spin the answer. That means you still have to have
good answers for that question, and for the behavioral questions, but you can
just answer them straightforwardly since there are better ways than personal
salesmanship to distinguish between different candidates.

Around here, we hire technical people based on substance, not salesmanship.
What the fuck do you do?

~~~
lrobb
It is a normal question... I never said it wasn't.

It's part of an interview process that includes an in depth review of your
projects and roles, a technical screen, some design questions, et al.

"Wtf do I do"? I don't hire people that become belligerent over or flustered
over simple meta level questions.

You might reconsider your negative bias towards "spin", btw...
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-one-thing-
every...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-one-thing-every-
software-engineer-should-know.html)

~~~
philwelch
> It is a normal question... I never said it wasn't

> It's part of an interview process that includes an in depth review of your
> projects and roles, a technical screen, some design questions, et al.

It sounds like we agree there. The background question is essential.
Behavioral questions are essential.

My problem is with the idea of agonizing over how you're going to spin your
answers to these questions. It should just be a pretty straightforward
conversation, and a fair share of the onus is on the interviewer for turning
it into a conversation. If you're not willing to do that, that tells me that
you, as a potential coworker or manager, are lazy and arrogant when dealing
with colleagues or subordinates. Did you forget that the candidate is
interviewing the company as well?

"What's your greatest weakness" is a lazy and arrogant question. It's also
adversarial and belligerent. To the interviewer, the question is a zero at
best because you'll never get a brutally honest answer to it. To the
candidate, the question is a red flag. Asking the question is never a win, and
neither is answering it.

Finally, while I've mostly accepted in my own life that a little bit of
salesmanship and negotiation is needed to get by in the world, I simply don't
think it's a good _hiring criteria_ for engineers. Ten times out of ten, I
want a colleague who is brilliant technically and a little naive rather than a
colleague who is merely competent but a great bullshitter. I think it's much
more important to select for "not an asshole" and "enough of a grownup to
behave professionally" than salesmanship. Crucially, this is something I try
to evaluate on _both_ sides of the interviewing table, and I will think you're
a bit of an asshole if you ask what my greatest weakness is.

------
narag
Nobody asked me the two later questions. The one about problems with coworkers
would have been a lot of fun. I have plenty of juicy anecdotes.

I have an objection to _The hiring manager doesn't need you to walk him
through your resume chronologically—he can read what's on the page, after
all._

Most interviewers I've met actually have _not_ read the cv further than the
absolute minimum to match keywords, and are not interested in reading the
printed cv, that appears to be a write-only piece of paper... they take notes
on it.

The interviewers who did read the CV beforehand are also the ones that direct
the conversation themselves and always ask in chronological order anyway.

It seems that they do that because they're seeking to make up a _narrative_ ,
a logical evolution of the career, so Ramit's advice stands after all.

~~~
mgkimsal
"I have an objection to The hiring manager doesn't need you to walk him
through your resume chronologically—he can read what's on the page, after all.
Most interviewers I've met actually have not read the cv further than the
absolute minimum to match keywords, and are not interested in reading the
printed cv, that appears to be a write-only piece of paper... they take notes
on it."

\---------

I think in at least some cases it serves two purposes:

1\. Does your recollection actually match up with what they have in front of
them? Going through agencies you'll have your resume altered without your
knowledge.

2\. Can you present written information in a compelling (or at least accurate)
way verbally?

~~~
narag
I'm sorry for the delay, I was moving. What you and jakejake say is right what
good interviewers do, the ones that I said that direct the conversation
themselves and expect me to be articulate and consistent.

The sad truth though is that many others don't have the time or don't give a
f#~%. It shows through many details. I don't know why. Maybe it's because they
already have a candidate that they think fits the best, and are only trying to
present the customer worse options to make _the one_ shine. Or maybe they're
underpaid, go figure.

There is a certain rules I've inferred from many interviews: if I reach the
technical interview, I'm in.

If the HR person is the motivated, organized kind, I will reach the technical
interview (so I'm in) unless I ask for 5k€ more than what the inteded to pay,
3k€ more is OK.

If the HR person is lazy or clueless, I could just walk away. I don't just in
case, but I've never seen nothing good coming from this kind of people.

About agencies changing cv, I'm _afraid_ it's not the case. I have the cv
uploaded in the jobs site so they could just download it when they receive the
application (I know because I've been at the other side of the table and used
the same site). They don't. The first thing they ask when they contact me is
to send them the very same cv by email.

------
ruggeri
Why do people hate the greatest weakness question? I have never minded
receiving it, and I often ask people the same.

Most of us write code; it's a technical occupation, and none of us are great
at everything. Are you super amazing and proficient with 100% of the
technologies you'll ever need to interact with? Can you not talk competently
about how you have been trying to get better at something? Are you not capable
of admitting a weakness without crippling insecurity?

Since you know this will be asked, are you so disorganized that you can't
think in advance to come up with an honest answer?

The only way to answer "too honestly" is to admit incompetence with the basic
skills I'm hiring for, or reveal massive personality problems. You score an
"A" if you talk about how you're trying to improve.

More commonly, applicants reveal themselves as someone willing to lie to my
face with a bullshit answer. I've never hired someone like that and never
will.

Edit: Also would _never_ hire someone who was offended by this question. I
think another commenter's suggestion that the applicant ask what the worst
thing about working at a company is fair, and vital information. Of course,
when I've asked this as an applicant I never received anything but bullshit in
response.

~~~
slurgfest
It's a pressure question, a kind of interrogation. If you are honest, you will
realize that you have a ton of things wrong with you and it isn't all that
meaningful to pick the "worst" one.

People have been asking this for so long that it really only gauges whether
the applicant canned an answer to it which sounds bad enough that you won't
think it's bullshit, but good enough that they aren't hurting their
application. As with other interrogation techniques you often aren't selecting
against lying, but just for plausible lying that you are unequipped to detect.
It is certainly an illusion that you are selecting for honesty this way.

If you do want to hire honest people, and it isn't for an area like sales
where it is important for them to project unrealistic levels of self-
confidence, you will cause less needless anxiety and get more actionable
information if you can get specific on what sort of disclosure you need,
rather than just asking the applicant to incriminate themselves in the worst
way they can imagine.

If you want to punish people with ability and integrity but lower self-esteem
then this question is your ideal instrument.

~~~
ruggeri
Fair points, but we do disagree, I think.

The "worst" part of the question is the worst part. I talk to people about
"one" weakness. I also ask for how they are trying to improve, which is
actually the key part of the question to me.

This is not intended as a pressure question. The point is not to learn about a
weakness so I can disqualify an applicant. If people ask this question in the
hopes that an applicant will incriminate himself, they're doing it
(interviewing) wrong. I think this misperception about the intent of the
question is what drives a lot of the fuss about it.

I think an interview process that is focused on filtering only people who
aren't bad enough to obviously reject is going to net a company a lot of bad
hires. You're right, plausible lying can be difficult to distinguish from
truth. But the kind of hire I'd like to make is one who can speak fluently and
with clear honesty about an area where he/she would like to improve.

To your last point: really don't think this is fair. If an applicant isn't
comfortable with discussing a single weakness without feeling totally
compromised, then I'm truly sorry, but their poor self-esteem is likely to get
in the way of co-workers being honest with them. I say that as someone not
characterized with excessively high self-esteem.

~~~
alexqgb
I hate to point this out, but you just asked "Why do people hate the greatest
weakness question?" after scrolling through a long and and very reasonable
list of reasons why people hate this question.

You also said people who don't answer the question directly are lazy and
dishonest. Now I must ask, do you list a glaring disinterest in the
perspectives of others among your own weaknesses? If not, does that make you
lazy and dishonest?

~~~
ruggeri
> Now I must ask, do you list a glaring disinterest in the perspectives of
> others among your own weaknesses? If not, does that make you lazy and
> dishonest?

This this really bugs me. You needn't ask at all; it was your choice to make
an ad hominem attack.

We merely disagree about the utility of an interview question; I think it's
revealing and you don't. You're offended because I've said that I think
failing to answer this question well may be indicative of personal flaws.
That's the position of anyone who uses this question, not an attack on any
poster here, most of whom disagree with me.

If you want to sit in an echo chamber, go somewhere else.

Edit: Not sure why I've been downvoted. Feel like this was a pretty moderate
response to someone who directly and personally insulted me.

~~~
alexqgb
Easy, tiger. My point is that anyone who thinks this question is a fair and
reliable way to suss out character flaws should think twice.

Again, what you did (asking a question when the answers were right in front of
you) indicated that you neither knew or cared enough to actually read what
others were saying. I promise you, this is not a good look. Disagreeing with
the answers is one thing. But behaving as though they don't even exist is
another. And given what we're discussing, this obliviousness is entirely
relevant to the conversation in that it demonstrates that people aren't
necessarily aware of their own shortcomings, at least not to the point where
they can enumerate them crisply, completely, and professionally. Even a
modicum of self-awareness (which you seem to lack) should make this clear.

And no, this observation doesn't constitute an ad hominem attack. Were the
personal factor irrelevant (e.g. "How could we trust you with the company's
finances? You're a woman!") then it would be. But that's because it introduces
a logical fallacy (thinking women, by their nature, can't handle finance), not
because it's disparaging. There's no rule of debate that says people can't say
things that are true simply because it could cause others to take offense. As
long as things they're saying are accurate and relevant, they're fair. That's
why saying "We can't trust you with the company's finances. You're a convicted
embezzler!" is not an ad hominem attack, even though a person's character is
clearly the subject. Given the circumstance, character is entirely relevant.
Indeed, it would be illogical NOT to mention it.

Now, it should be clear that there is nothing irrelevant about an overlooked
weakness that exists in a speaker who is busy arguing that people who are
unprepared to discuss their weaknesses are either lazy or dishonest.
Obviously, you'd be unprepared to discuss your own weakness if you needed to,
and not because you're lazy or dishonest. It's because you're human, just like
the rest of us.

The problem with humans is that a lot of them are stupid. They ask stupid
questions and draw stupid conclusions from the answers they receive. Smart
people learn to identify the stupid ones fairly swiftly, and after having been
burned by stupidity, they learn to evade it when necessary.

Few questions telegraph stupidity more reliably that "Tell me about your
weakness?" You may think it's a great question, but as we've seen, you rank
fairly low on the self-awareness scale and your idiotic judgements about
people who are uncomfortable with it ("Lazy unprepared liar!") just confirms
smart people's deepest fears about what goes on inside the heads of people who
think this question is a great way to get reliable information.

~~~
ruggeri
Holy tortured reasoning (riddled with insults), Batman! Do you actually
believe any of this?

I like how you ignore where I respond to a prior comment, describe the
commenter's arguments as fair, and then address them one by one. Maybe you
notice where I don't insult the guy who disagrees with me? You've now written
500+ words of arrogant moralizing premised on a single rhetorical question
which you intentionally misconstrued.

> Now, it should be clear that there is nothing irrelevant about an overlooked
> weakness that exists in a speaker who is busy arguing that people who are
> unprepared to discuss their weaknesses are either lazy or dishonest.

In point of fact, it is clearly irrelevant.

Let's be honest: like everyone, I surely have many failings I am blind to.
Probably these including massive, debilitating personal failures. _And still_
, I am aware of at least some of my many flaws, and I'm willing to talk about
how I am trying to improve with an interviewer. Perhaps not the weaknesses
which you would impute to me, but other ones.

The question is not to _correctly_ identify an applicant's greatest weakness
(how would the interviewer verify this?), or for the applicant enumerate every
weakness. It's to discuss _one_ weakness. So whether I'm oblivious or idiotic
or anything else you call me has nothing to do with anything, except as an
expression of your own incoherent anger.

~~~
alexqgb
Rest assured, I was neither ignoring nor overlooking anything.

Here's what you said up top: "Why do people hate the greatest weakness
question? I have never minded receiving it, and I often ask people the same."

After receiving an answer, your story changed a little. Now it was about "one"
weakness. And a bit further down, you complete the reversal by asserting that
asking about the greatest weakness is pointless, since people's answers can't
be verified.

So you often ask a question you don't ask because it's silly. Got it.

I think what this exchange demonstrates is that you don't need to explicitly
ask "what's your greatest weakness" to get some idea about the problems you
may encounter in working with an individual. Indeed, you can get solid
information about a person from a conversation about the whether if you're
paying close enough attention to what they actually say. Conducting the
interview at a restaurant and watching how they treat the waiter is an
especially good way to to get a reliable quick-read. Observations like these
won't tell you who is perfect for the job, but they will tell you who is to be
avoided.

The key to these revealing moments is that the person you're considering isn't
feeling on the spot at the time. That's why anxiety-producing questions are so
unproductive. The interview situation provides enough nervousness on its own.
Far better to relieve some of that pressure, allow people to be themselves,
and just see what happens next.

------
hypnotist
The main point I would take from that kind of advices is that all answers, no
matter how fancy, should sound like _you_ , and not like you're just reciting
some self-help book on passing the job interviews.

------
Tycho
The holy grail of interview answers is how you can politely tell the
interviewer to fuck off when they ask you about your weaknesses.

------
btilly
I would answer all three of these very, very differently.

I would spin my work history to fit whatever (true) narrative I am telling
about my life at the moment. Currently that narrative is how much my family
responsibilities impact my ability to work.

I see the greatest weakness question as a negotiating opportunity for me to
present whatever I most want to be accommodated on. Currently that would be my
family responsibilities, though normally it is how important it is for my
ability to focus and be sane that I have some social time.

The conflict question I would immediately respond to with the time that I
wound up being the person that both a very competent lead developer and some
grumpy sysadmins would talk to. In the end, even though what they were doing
was not what I was supposed to be doing, I was appointed by my manager to be
the official go between between them. Not exactly fun, and not something I
want to repeat, but the story reflects well on me.

------
gavinjoyce
These are poor interview questions which reflect badly on the company.
Interviews are a two way process.

------
RyanZAG
Best way to answer these questions is to not let them come up at all. Focus
the interview on what you can offer the company by proactively asking them
what roles they need you for, where you will fit in the company, what
challenges they currently have, etc. Spend the interview talking about how
you're going to help out the company and not on answering the checklist they
quickly downloaded off the web as they have no idea what to even talk to you
about.

~~~
redguava
That would never work for a competent interviewer. Sure if they just
downloaded a checklist off the web, but is that really the kind of place you
want a job at?

------
redguava
Following guides on how to answer interview questions does more harm than
good.

Just be honest and be yourself.

~~~
rdl
It's totally worthwhile to learn about interviews, successful and
unsuccessful, both as an interviewer and interviewee.

"Just be honest and be yourself" is necessary but insufficient. You really
should understand how interviewers think and work to be interviewed
successfully.

~~~
redguava
My experience has been that I interview worse for having "researched"
interviewing. It gets me trying to answer what they want to hear rather than
what I actually would normally say. That is a bad way to interview.

Also as an interviewer, the people trying to answer "the right way" never get
past first round. I want someone that's genuine, not someone just trying to
pick the right answers to get the job.

------
skylan_q
"Why this works: This question is a minefield that traps most candidates. If
you answer too honestly—"I'm irritable in the morning and bad at time
management"—you're an instant no-hire."

I love this question. To me, the above reads as "we don't value honesty as
much as you do"

------
markhelo
I find that usually asking people to tell a little bit about themselves
reveals a lot already what you would get from these questions. Knowing that
the candidate is prepared to handle such questions is a strong signal in
itself. I generally prefer candidates who have thought about what they want to
say to such questions.

