Tricky questions
Asked by a prospective employer
As noted on the previous page Looking for work, one employer was sufficiently interested in my CV to ask me a few more questions. The first set of questions was tricky.
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After some thought, I came up with some good answers, all things considered.
1a - During work, I focus on work - I'm less easily distracted by all the gossip and chit-chat.
1b - I can work on my own or as a team member.
1c - I am always willing to share my knowledge and experience, if other people wish to tap into it, but I don't impose myself on them.
2 - Aren't those attributes great in any job?
3 - My biggest success was probably finding a job again after eight years out of work in the nineties, but that's probably not what you mean. OK, deciding my biggest success within a job is tricky because there are so many to choose from. It could be the pivotal role I played in the development of Gateshead Council's original social services computer system way back in the seventies, or maybe the conversion of Somerset Council's payroll computer system for use on a different type of computer in the late eighties, when I did the work originally intended to be done by three or four people, in the timescale that those people would have taken.
I was rewarded with a set of even trickier questions, though I was also told that these were the final questions that would determine who would be interviewed - on Friday the 13th (!).
4 - If I was to ring your current/former boss, how would they describe you?
5 - What do you want to achieve in life? And what are the most important things to you in life?
6 - People naturally tend to play down their weaknesses and talk about their strengths. So can you tell me what weaknesses you might have?
7 - What one impossible hurdle have you overcome in your life that caused you to believe that you can achieve anything?
8 - As you have decided ‘not’ to participate in the recession, name a minimum of three people with contact details who would benefit from the services and products our business provides.
I'd answered the impossible hurdle question in the first sentence of my answer to question 3. I could have answered the current/former boss question by giving contact details. After careful consideration, I decided not to respond as there was no way that I could answer the final question. I just don't have the contacts that the employer was looking for. I was most annoyed with that question, especially as it wasn't a sales job that I was applying for. Such is life, but it saved me from thinking up answers to the other two questions. The one asking what you want to achieve in life is another piece of ageism. Even if I find work quickly, it is reasonable to expect that most of my future will be spent in retirement rather than at work, so it's not an easy question to answer when applying for a job. However, the really thorny question is the weakness question.
Strengths and weaknesses
Weaknesses are sometimes strengths in other situations. I remember many years ago seeing a newspaper article about the strengths and weaknesses of political leaders, explaining that whatever characteristic one of them had, it could be described as a strength or a weakness according to how you choose to portray it. For example, although I don't remember the exact words selected, it suggested something along the lines that a "conciliatory and consensual" leader such as John Major can also be described as "weak and indecisive", while a "strong and decisive" leader such as Margaret Thatcher can be described as "authoritarian, bullying and inconsiderate". Those politicians can never win, can they? But as you'll have probably deduced if you read about My own political beliefs, you'll know that I generally prefer British prime ministers who are "strong and decisive". At least they have a reason to be in politics. Democratic forces ensure that if they overstep the mark, they are ousted.
Looking back at the answers I gave to the tricky questions, you'll realise that "outgoing person" can be interpreted as "spends too much time gossiping" while "hard-working" can be interpreted as "not very sociable". It just depends how people want to twist things to suit their own purposes. The original article included a long list of attributes, not limited to personality but also including physical appearance.
When it comes to job applications, the very idea of discussing weaknesses is ludicrous, although quite common. What do they expect candidates to say? What weaknesses are acceptable? Are dishonest candidates more likely to be appointed as a result of such a question being asked, since it implicitly encourages lying? I found a few hints online but I haven't studied them to see how helpful they are (or aren't). I'll update this page when I've assessed them.
| About weaknesses |
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| CV tips - What are your weaknesses? |
| WikiHow - How to communicate your weaknesses |
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