Interview with Purpose: Ask the questions that matter.

I was in a job interview recently where I was asked the question “What is your greatest strength? What is your greatest weakness?”. This has to be my least favorite interview question of all time. It contributes little to nothing to the interview, the answer has nothing to do with a person’s ability to do the work required, and it doesn’t give you much insight into the person sitting across the table. 

Whenever interviews have come up as a topic of conversation at my workplace, this question always gets mentioned. The general consensus is that everybody lies on this question because people are reluctant to sharte what they perceive as weaknesses with others, and it is only a matter of how convincingly you lie that will get you through it. Add to this the fact that people are really bad at recognizing their own strengths, and you get a situation where nobody wins.

This is really disturbing to me and begs the question of how many qualified candidates were eliminated because they had the ‘wrong’ weakness, or their strength wasn’t what someone was looking for in a candidate. It also makes me wonder if there are any potential biases at work here which eliminate candidates for a variety of other reasons. Different cultures value different strengths, gender and race are judged based on different criteria as well. With a push to diversify the American workplace, we really should take a closer look at interview questions and take into consideration who these questions are serving and who might be getting left out. We should also make sure that we aren’t asking these questions because we have always asked these questions. 

A job interview is supposed to be a two-way conversation about the job, the expectations on both sides of the table, and the candidate’s qualification. Ask candidates direct and clear questions about their skills and past work - candidates should never have to guess what you are asking them for. Engage in the conversation and find out more about the individual across from you. A conversation between people brings so much more to the interview than a verbal test or guessing game, where one person does all the talking. Some workplaces face certain restrictions on the type of questions they ask, which makes it even more important that they re-examine their interview questions - because as fair as they might seem, the interview panel still brings their own biases with them to the interview.