Want to Know My Weaknesses? You Go First!
Have we not evolved to the point where we can stop asking brainless job interview questions like "What's your greatest weakness?" I hope we have. Our customers assume that we have.
They would be horrified to think that you're turning your job interviews into displays of Great Ape power at the expense of the brilliant job applicants who could help your company thrive if you would only get off your throne and treat them like equals.
Here is the lame defense that stuck-in-the-past hiring managers give me for hanging on to the outdated question "What's your greatest weakness?"
I need to know whether a job applicant knows his weakness or not. If he doesn't know his weakness, how will he correct it?
The first bit of magical thinking in the sentiment above is the presumption that everybody has weaknesses, or that everybody has one special weakness. Why should that be so? I don't think you have weaknesses. I have weaknesses -- I have a weakness for chocolate and black-and-white movies from the thirties -- but I don't assume therefore that you have weaknesses!
People are not born with defects. The idea that we have weaknesses and must spend our lives correcting them is an old, puritan notion that many people in the United States believe, as well as people who have been unduly influenced by the unhealthy ideas U.S.-based businesses export to other countries.
What if the truth is that people don't have weaknesses, only strengths? We know what our strengths are or we can learn what they are by trying things out and seeing how well we do and how well we like the new things we try. How would we ever know what our weaknesses might be?
Your weakness could only be something that you should do well and you don't do well. Who's to say what you should do well? Is there a chart on the wall in heaven that tells us what human beings must be able to do? I vote NO!
Even if people have weaknesses, as I have just pointed out that they do not, why would it remotely be a potential employer's business to learn what your weaknesses are?
An interviewer is not a therapist. As an interviewer, you want to find out whether your job applicant is self-aware, but what about your own self-awareness?
Here is my challenge to you. If you can't give up the job interview question "What's your greatest weakness?" then preface the question with an explanation of your own weakness, first.
Tell the job seeker what you wish you were good at, and then ask them "What are you working to get better at?" If you want to get all soft and gooey in the interview, then you go first.
Be honest about a soft spot in your armor that you wish were not so soft.
If this challenge is too scary for you, then you know that you are asking a highly inappropriate and invasive interview question that has no connection to the actual job. It is a question that springs from your ego, my darling, and I'm sorry if that is hard for you to hear.
You have to look in the mirror and acknowledge that as long as you treat a job interview as a process of deciding which of the lowly serfs in front of you is worthy of a seat at your conference room table, you will drive the best people away.
When you rise up to the human level and Lead with a Human Voice in the manner of Human Workplace leaders everywhere, watch how your team responds! Watch and see how much easier it becomes to hire great people and make your workplace fun and challenging and human, the way it should be.
If you're job-hunting, looking to change careers, eager to get ahead in your current job or thinking about starting a consulting business, check out our Four-Week and 12-Week Virtual Courses starting March 5, 2016!
Everyone who enrolls in a Virtual Course with Human Workplace this month will attend a Members-Only Live Webinar with our CEO, Liz Ryan, on March 16th, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. MT!
Want to learn how to interview candidates without asking questions like "What's your greatest weakness?" Join us in the Four-Week Virtual Course Recruiting with a Human Voice beginning March 5, 2016!
@enahodzig
Customer Care Representative at Transamerica
8 年Thank you Liz! Best article I've read on any subject at all, for a long, long time!
Funeral Service Operative | Property Investor & Landlord | Veteran
8 年Q. What are your Strengths and Overdone Strengths?
Certified Career Strategist ? Career~Interview~Job Search ? Resumes/Linkedin ?COACHING CLIENTS ON THE DREAM JOB JOURNEY?
8 年I really like Frank Kruller answer. I really appreciate how he changed it up, this makes way more sense that the standard greatest weakness/strength question. As an Certified Career Strategist and Interview Coach, this is the number one question that my clients want help with to answer. I am happy to report that I hear less of this question being asked than in previous years. Realistically, most candidates are not going to own up to being disorganized, having trouble looking busy when they are not, time management problems or challenges being a team player. I advice my clients to choose a task that they have had problems with in the past and is unrelated to the job that they are applying for. For example: I personally can manage quite well using MS Excel spreadsheets templates but would have difficulty creating a complex multiple spreadsheet/workbook. If I found out later that part of the job required creating complex workbooks, I know I would not be happy if that was a big component of my job hence I wasn't a good fit.
Senior Director specializing in Alumni Engagement and Professional Development
8 年Vicki R. wrote, "If I'm not good at something I won't apply for jobs that require it." I am a terrible, terrible knitter. When I have tried to knit in the past, the stitches became so tight that the needles became hopelessly locked. Guess what? I will never apply for a role that requires knitting as it would stress me out and get me fired if the hiring manager was silly enough to hire someone with no "knitting credentials." Thanks for the great article, Liz.