The Worst Interview Question

At Hiregy we interview each candidate we present to our client companies and we've gathered feedback on many interviews conducted by area hiring managers.   There's one question that seems to give most people grief:  "what do you consider your greatest weakness?" 

In this HBR.org article by Priscilla Claman, she basically says this question is old-fashioned, ineffective and shouldn't even be used by interviewers.  We couldn't agree more.  There are much better ways to engage candidates in conversations to reveal potential weaknesses specific to the role they're interviewing for.  For example, a hiring manager could ask the candidate to describe a past scenerio such as "tell me about a time where you tried to acomplish something and failed"  or "tell me about a stressful time where you were able to use your coping skills to handle the situation."   These behavioral-type questions would give the hiring manager a better view of their real strengths and weaknesses.

Read the article here.