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Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

You see, this stupid question is designed to be rightly answered by someone who has carefully crafted an answer that turn some apparent weakness into a perceived strength.

Wrong. That's precisely the kind of answer it's meant to weed out. The question is supposed to show your ability for reflection on your faults (because everybody has them), and let you explain how you are going about working on them.

If you take it seriously, you can get quite deep and philosophical with that question, demonstrating your ability to express yourself, and discussing the relative merits of someone looking to fill the position.

Granted, the phrasing is very cliche, so it might be better to ask something along the lines "in the near future, how would you like to have improved yourself?".

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Weeding people out based on whether they give a "correct" answer to this question seems kinda ridiculous.

With the exception of someone admitting to a horrendous fault (anger problem), I don't see how this answer could dictate a hire or no hire.

If your interviewing someone with great credentials, great references, and then they answer this question with "sometimes I work too hard"... your not going to hire him?

What this question does is force the candidate to make a snap decision: Is this particular interviewer hoping I express an honest weakness or is he seeing if a can turn a weakness into a strength?

Guess wrong and your out?

I usually restrain myself on HN, but this time I can't..

Please, oh please oh please keep in mind that "your" is not "you are".

Having to constantly be deciphering (imploded) sentences is exhausting.

"Is he talking about possession?" "Is he comparing things or putting them in chronological order?".. and so on.

Anyways.. :)

I've been asked this question a lot of times.

Usually I've worked hard to dance around the issue, and I guess I've often blown it too.

Once I even voiced my concerns about the sensibility of the question, but the interviewer said I should answer it anyway!

I think I should try something like this in the future:

- What's your greatest weakness?

- Asian women.

( Unlike some people even on HN, I don't claim to see much action though :p )

I totally agree - and in fact I think this is one of the best interview questions. In my experience, the people who identify and actively work on their weaknesses are the most likely to succeed.

That said, I might rephrase the question to be something like "What new things would you like to learn, and how are you going about learning them?"

I identify my weaknessess and actively work on them, but I would never answer this question honestly, because I can't assume that the questioner is someone as enlightened as you.

because I can't assume that the questioner is someone as enlightened as you

But if they aren't, I don't really want to work for them. My being genuinely philosophical is often off-putting to people as overly smart-ass-ish or academic. I realize the dark side to this is that it limits my selection of jobs, but it makes for good conversation when I find a job I like.

you are assuming all great companies that you want to work for, have only excellent people.... wrong. Even good companies, have bozos inside. You don't know yet who are you dealing with. If the guy is asking this question, there is a great chance that he is a bozo. Yes. I have been asked this question before, and during the conversation I could tell the guy asking was not a good engineer.

The problem is that the "weakness" question has become so predictably overused and coached that everyone has a "weakness as a strength" answer readily prepared.

I've found that textbook interview questions don't do anything other than badge the interviewer as unimaginative and 1 dimensional.

IME, the best interviews are conversations and not interviews at all.

I've asked something like this while giving an interview before: "What's your greatest weakness? And don't do the thing where you turn it around to a strength."

That just really seemed to confuse people. They weren't very good candidates though.

Interesting strategy... It's something like asking "What's the number one reason I shouldn't hire you?"

I can't see a benefit to asking it, as it would only favor dishonest applicants while irritating others, but it would be interesting to hear the answers.

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