- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
People ask this for one of two reasons, either they are useless at interviewing and cannot think of anything else, or they are brilliant at interviews and know that this question shows how well you plan and prepare.
Think of an answer that is based on a strength like working too hard, being too diligent, getting too involved, too quality. Or something that technology has over come, poor spelling (spell check), organisation (PDA) or getting lost (sat nav). Then tailor your answer so that your “weakness” happens to be a positive thing.
- What is your favourite colour?
- What is your favourite animal?
- If you were an animal / car / colour what colour would you be?
All these questions are the same, the answer you give is irrelevant, it is the supplementary question that is the killer. Why is that? Describe the car, colour animal?
I once asked “What is your favourite colour?”
“Yellow” said the 25 years old, female candidate
“Can you describe that colour?” I asked
“Flirty sexy, crazy, funky, silly and mad”
“Does that describe you?” I asked
“Yes it does” she replied, super embarrassed and blushing!
How would you handle … this situation?
The temptation is to leap in with the solution, but asking a question about the scenario buys you a little bit of thinking time and it might help clarify the problem.
Give the most professional answer you can give, I can think of few occasions where a flippant answer wins the job.
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