Have you ever been asked “What is your biggest weakness?”
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It's a tracer for one of two things: an interviewer who doesn't know what he or she is doing or an organization that's more interested in rejecting candidates than in hiring candidates.
In the typical small company, the hiring people are hiring somebody because they need a job done. This is true about a startup, but it's also true about a web design shop or a coffee shop. The sooner the person is hired, the sooner the job gets done -- this is really the preferable situation for the interviewee. If you're (1) able to do the job, and (2) really want the job, (3) act that way, and (4) interview at your level (most people don't) you'll probably get an offer at the end of the interview.
In big companies and, say, support positions in academic organizations, hiring is usually triggered by the addition of a line item to a budget. Unfortunately there isn't a very strong relationship between the addition of a line item and an actual need. It might take three years of haggling to add a line item after the need is identified, for instance. Jobs like this also get a large number of applications from people who are more interested in collecting dental and retirement benefits than they are in getting a salary or making a contribution.
As a result of those factors, that kind of organization has little urgency in the hiring process plus it has an extreme fear of taking on freeloaders -- or alternately, the people interviewing you could be freeloaders who are deathly afraid of hiring somebody who would hold them to account.
In the big picture, most hiring people don't know what they're doing and most interviewees interview a few steps below their level. If you can interview at your level, you're interviewing well above your level compared to your peers.
The funny thing is that if you ask someone (as both interviewer and interviewee), "In 6 months, what will I love about working with you? And what will I hate about working with you?" you will get actually useful responses that approach the honest intent of the question.
(And by the way: My new boss once answered the latter question, "You won't hate anything about working with me!" -- and he turned out to be the biggest asshat ever. It's just one data point, but my conclusion is that anyone who thinks he does nothing annoying is to be avoided.)
First, it'll help you find out if the person you'll be working for thinks it's a bullshit question too. Or if she answers honestly. And since you're going to be reporting to her, so doesn't it make sense to know what you're going to be dealing with?
I actually find it weird sometimes how uncurious people seem to be about where they'll potentially be working and who they'll be working with.
Print a business card that says "Sometimes my overpreparedness comes across as arrogance." Hand it to the interviewer when asked.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jidho/what_is_the...
The only thing the interviewer learned was that I knew how to answer that question. However I learned that the interviewer was not someone I wanted to work for.
The downsides to asking that question far outweigh the benefits. An interviewer should be trying to give a good impression of themselves as well as finding out about the candidate and this question does the opposite.
I see it as a two part question.
1. Do you realize self-improvement is a life-long pursuit? What are you currently working on to improve yourself?
2. Do you have the ability smooth over a negative point when talking to a stakeholder? "Yeah, we released a week late, but on the plus side we found some bugs that would have been deadly in production."
Maybe the question would be less abrasive if it was phrased, "What is a weakness that you have?" (Which is really what they're asking, they're not asking for your biggest, darkest secret.)
The answer can be simply something like, "For someone working on internet apps, I don't know as much about socket programming as I'd like to. So I've been reading/working on a project to learn more about it."
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Tell the interviewer what your biggest weakness is. Be honest with yourself, and then be honest with them. I don't mean that you should blurt out, "I stay up all night watching Gossip Girl reruns," (unless that affects your productivity at work in a non-trivial way), but do an honest assessment of yourself, decide what your biggest work-related weakness is, and tell them.
If you end up working with them, they're going to find out what it is anyway, and if they're aware that you're aware of it, they can help you overcome it. If you just grin and say something like "I work too hard" or "I'm too much of a perfectionist," you've only succeeded in wasting yourthe interviewer's (and your) time.
Being too much of perfectionist means that you can't deal with it when others just want to slap a bandaid on issues to get the job done for now.
Sure you might put a shysters grin on it, as if you're really revealing a positive trait but the reality is much different I think.
I think it's also important to follow up with how you've been improving it over the last few months. "I sometimes do #{bad_thing}" is a good start, but I want to know what you're doing to work on it. If it truly is your "biggest weakness" and you're doing nothing to overcome it, nohire.
I feel like this person has not been through enough job interviews. This question is standard fare, so you better be prepared for it.
Also, it doesn't really matter if your opinion of them drops--they're interviewing you. Just take on the questions as they come and knock em out the box.
Unless you're desperate to take any job you can, any interview is a two-way process.
Of course it matters, unless you don't care who you work for. You're interviewing the company just as much as they're interviewing you.
I blame this on teaching myself coding as a kid with no Internet. I couldn't look up libraries so I wrote my own solutions for all my coding challenges.
These days I recognize this in myself and force myself to look up any libraries that I can import rather than coding the whole stack myself.
It's sort of a stupid question, but so what? I don't think I've ever disqualified anyone based on their answer, but for sure there were candidates who answered it really well and it helped them.
I notice the people who can't answer this question also tend to be the people who have a hard time explaining why someone would choose Rails over Java, or identifying strengths and weaknesses of PHP, or expressing a strong opinion about anything.
My answer was: Facebook. When I get stuck many times instead of solving the problem I find myself on Facebook.
Being prepared for a particular interview (i.e. knowing about the company you're interviewing with and having relevant questions) is probably a good sign that the person wants that particular job, which is generally a good thing. But simply being prepared for 100 Common Interview Questions doesn't tell you that — and might even be more a sign of the opposite.
FWIW my answers are built-in to my resume: < http://careers.stackoverflow.com/dustingetz >
It is actually a perfect testing question of attitude: Does the candidate get a sneer? Do they answer with attitude, or with zero creativity or interest? "I work too hard. I care too much."
Awesome, they've weeded themselves out as no hires. I thank sites like Reddit and HN for engendering such a sense of attitude among so many that it allows you to filter them early in the process: No need to get to the technical questions if you can't answer a simple question of a professional peer.
It is not a difficult question. Further, people who say that it's to "test for self-awareness" don't get the point of it. You can actually ask almost anything of an interviewee and discern knowledge about how they think, how they reason, and how they communicate. This is just such a question, with loads of information delivered by the response. Because when I'm interviewing we're looking for someone to work closely with us -- minus the attitude -- for hopefully years. If we just want to ask technical questions we'd hire a consulting company.
The reason I've always disliked it is that it's just begging for a silly response. Sure, I have weaknesses; but you are asking someone to brag about the things they do poorly at the same time they want to make the best impression. That does not encourage or reward honestly.
It also feels like a "cheater" question, and makes me feel the way I do when a sports news person asks a team member, "How big is this victory for you?" What the heck does she think he is going to say: "I really don't care that we won"?
But does the question really elicit the information you're looking for? CandidateA may know that her JavaScript could be better, but the (real) weakness she may trot out is that she's really nervous as a public speaker. It's not that she is hiding her JavaScript weakness, just that she's bothered less by it. CandidateB tells you that his JavaScript could be better, but he doesn't tell you that he yells at coworkers when they disagree with him. You're not necessarily going to get the info you asked for... for good or ill.
Why not ask, instead, "In which languages do you feel most and least confident? Why do you think that is?" or "We each learn differently: books, classes, hands-on experimentation. How do you go about learning a new language?" In the latter case, for instance, there's no obvious right or wrong answer which the candidate is motivated to "guess"; it's simply a matter of learning how this person operates.
Actually I ask this question specifically because it is such a rallying point of angry, offended developers (specifically those who interview a lot, unsuccessfully, thus having a serious chip on their shoulder about the interview process). If someone is going to be a prima donna, unable to communicate with peers without a dismissive attitude, I desperately want to weed them out at the beginning. This question serves that purpose brilliantly.
What does it say about you?
Is this one of those "we're equals" things? I think the interviewees I adore the most are those that try to "turn the table" and interview me. Throw some hardballs to determine if we're worth their trouble.
We pay far above the norm. We have flexible hours and telecommuting. We work on fantastic technologies that are driven by our development staff. Meaning we are in the driver's seat. I will engage every filter I can conceive to cull the herd, and I've found that asinine question to be a perfect tool for that.
You whole argument tells me you never actually hired people to work for you. Sitting on interviews and writing feedbacks is very different from hiring people to implement your ideas i.e. when your job depends on the work people you hired produce. Making talented people work for you when they don't have to is not an easy thing. Sitting on a high horse, like you are, it is pretty impossible.
There are exceptional employees who we'll tolerate the bullshit for, but they are the exception.
Making talented people work for you when they don't have to is not an easy thing. Sitting on a high horse, like you are, it is pretty impossible.
If this helps you sleep better at night, you go nuts.
Whenever discussions about interviews or interviewers come up, the vast majority of comments are naturally going to come from people with a chip on their shoulder about the process -- the bottom dregs who churn from interview to interview. If you think the sorts of comments that discussions like this yield represents the actual talent that employers are seeking, you are sadly misinformed in the internet echo chamber.
I still suspect that most interviewers are being trite with this question, but the years of experience have taught me that the question does have a kernel of relevance. Ideally, the goal of working with a team (i.e. a company) isn't just to have a linear productivity amplifier, but to build something greater than the sum of what the individual members could build. This means understanding not only the strengths that you bring to the table, but also your weaker areas where you can benefit from the strengths of others. In the context of building a strong team, I now think this could be a very valid question.