That's bad in two ways. If the company is stuck in a time warp with respect to their interviewing process but actually needs a thinking person to help them out, you won't get the job.
If the company doesn't want to hire a thinking person and wants a sheep instead, you'll get the job, and then you'll hate yourself even more!
Here are non-standard answers to the traditional hare-brained interview questions. To give these answers (or your own personal variation on any of them) requires a little more mojo than you may have displayed in a job interview thus far.
It's good to try new things! That how we grow muscles.
Try some of these smart answers to stupid interview questions and see how it feels. I predict you'll feel more like yourself and more confident every time you try it.
With All the Talented Candidates, Why Should We Hire You? It may take all the strength you've got to bite your lip rather than to reply "If you don't think I'm as good as the other people you interviewed, why would you waste your time and mine dragging me in here?"
This is a really insulting question, and on top of that it's brainless. The recruiter or hiring manager will meet the other candidates, and you won't.
How could you possibly compare yourself to people you've never met?
Apologists for this disgusting question say "You're not supposed to take it literally. It's a chance to show off your skills." If an interviewer needs applicants to dance and prance and pirouette for them, the poor interviewer doesn't get enough affirmation in his or her life.
That's a shame. However, that is not your problem.
At Human Workplace we recommend this answer: "That's a great question. I think that's what we're here to establish - am I the right person for this job, and are you the right employer for me?
"I can't tell you how I compare the other candidates, obviously, but I can say that if you and I are meant to work together, I'm sure both of us will be able to tell. What do you think?"
What's Your Greatest Weakness?Perhaps you've heard the old joke: an interviewer asks a candidate "What's your greatest weakness?" and the candidate says "I'm too honest."
The interviewer says "I don't think that's a weakness" and the candidate says "I don't give a sh*t what you think!"
Here's the answer we recommend: "Weaknesses? I used to think I had weaknesses and I used to worry about the parts of me that I didn't feel comfortable with.
"Gradually it dawned on me that I'm perfectly suited to the things I do well, like [graphic design and art direction] and that there are other things I shouldn't be doing because I don't enjoy them and I'm no good at them - like [Excel spreadsheets] for example. What about you?"
It is an old-fashioned and curiously American bias that people are born with weaknesses. We can thank our Puritan forebears for that no-one-is-okay-as-they-are belief system which has populated the waiting rooms of therapists for generations.
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