Sometimes we do things for the simple reason that everyone else does them. Job interviews are no exception, and most recruiters know a lot about that. We’ve already seen how many companies borrowed Google’s most “controversial” interview questions to try out in their own hiring, just because Google used them and it looked very “cool”, until Google itself admitted that those questions were a waste of time and money.
In other words, plenty of interviewers at major companies were making fools of themselves with questions they had no idea how to get anything out of, because there was really nothing to get out of them.
Most of us have been interviewed by a recruiter at some point. But when you sit down to interview a candidate for the first time, you tend to fall back on the HR manual or, these days, on “Saint Google”, where you type in “best job interview questions“. Recruiters end up asking those worthless questions simply because someone said they were the best.
Recruiters behave like sheep, end up hiring lambs, and companies end up looking like a slaughterhouse with far too many people in it, starting with the recruiter who lacked the talent to spot talent in candidates.
Once a job interview turns into an interrogation, it loses its purpose
An interview is nothing more than a process in which two people each put something on the table to see whether they could work together: one brings their skills and the other pays for them; one says how much they will pay and what kind of work they need, and the other accepts or doesn’t. Ultimately, it’s the worker who chooses the company they want to work for. Recruiters, and companies themselves, sometimes forget this.
See also: 175 applicants for every job opening at Inditex
The other day someone asked me how to answer a particular question: “What would it mean to you to work here?” The funny thing is that the job was an administrative post at a cemetery and funeral home.
What should the candidate say? That it’s the job they’ve always dreamed of? Showing that kind of passion for that kind of work would almost be worrying. With that said, here are the questions.
3 job interview questions recruiters should stop asking
There are actually many more questions that have no place in a job interview.
1. What is your greatest weakness?
Candidates already know the trick for answering this one: just pick a theoretical weakness and, as if by magic, turn that flaw into a strength.
For example: “My greatest weakness is that I’m a perfectionist. I like to do things well and I don’t stop until I get there.”
Or my favourite: “I lose track of time at work, and sometimes, before I know it, everyone has gone home and I’m still working.”
Good heavens, what terrible weaknesses. What company would want to hire someone who does things too well, or someone so hard-working?
We’ve already looked at one way to answer this question: How to answer “What is your greatest weakness?”
But in the end, the interviewer asks it for some reason, knowing (or they should know, unless they’re not very bright) that nobody is going to answer it honestly. So it’s a question asked in the hope of being lied to…
The smartest thing is not to ask it at all. Replace it with: What can you bring to this company?
2. Where do you see yourself in five years?
We’ve also looked at the right way to answer this useless, throwaway question, and explained that interviewers use it to gauge how committed the candidate is to the company. That’s not very smart on the recruiter’s part, and it would certainly be worrying for a candidate to show commitment to a company they haven’t even started working for.
If you work in Human Resources, save your energy on this question with candidates and ask it of the people who already work at the company. There it would make sense, and it would give us valuable information about the aspirations of the people who work for us and who actually know the company. But a candidate? Once again, replace it with: What else can you bring to our company?
3. Why should we hire you rather than someone else?
The first time I was asked this, I didn’t hesitate to answer with some irony: “I don’t know, who have you got in the waiting room? Maybe you’ve got someone much better than me. I don’t know the others.” Needless to say, the recruiter was thrown and didn’t take the answer very well.
I’ve never seen the point of this question, which is as old as it is useless. Ask, once more, in case you didn’t hear it the first two times: What can you bring to this company, and how would you do it?
Interviewers should stop for a moment and ask themselves where most of the questions they put to candidates actually lead. If they are really honest with themselves, they will find that 90% of the mechanical questions in an interview lead nowhere.
In the end, it’s about filling a need in the company through a specific role, with a person who has the skills to improve the company and contribute something to it from that role. And the company has to look after its good workers and “send packing” the bad ones.
Ultimately, the basis of an interview should be to stop interviewing candidates and start talking with them in order to reach an agreement.
See also: 15 odd things that can affect whether you get hired
See also: My 3 most surreal job interviews
Featured image: Sandstein, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
