Re: Interview questions (Was re: Tech Writing 101 - How to tie a shoe)

["Marie C. Paretti" <mparetti -at- RRINC -dot- COM>]

At 07:27 AM 1/13/99 -0500, John wrote:
>I'd have to disagree on that one. The interviewer, in my view, is not asking
>"What's your biggest weakness" in
>order to give me an opportunity to make myself look good. He/she is asking
>in an attempt to trip me up, or
>perhaps as a way of gauging how I will react to ridiculous situations.
>

As an interviewer, I have a different take, John.  I'm neither trying to
trip you up or gauging how you will react to ridiculous situations. I
really want to know what you think your weaknesses are, for several reasons:

First of all, this is a small company with an even smaller tech comm
department, and people will ask you to do anything and everything. Unless
you are able to sort out what you can do from what you can't do (in terms
of both time and ability), you'll be overwhelmed and you'll end up wasting
valuable time. And if I see from your resume and our conversation that
you're a really great writer and hire you, but then learn that one of your
biggest weaknesses is that you tend to need a lot of supervision and you
have a hard time managing multiple tasks, then I'm sunk because those
skills are essential to working in a small company like this.

Second, there are lots of different tech comm tasks to be done, and unless
I know which ones you're best at and which ones you're worst out, I won't
necessarily know how to use you most productively. Yes, your strengths and
your resume tell me that in part, but I may assume that because you can do
X you can also do Y, when in fact Y is something you're not good at. That
doesn't mean I'll never ask you to do Y, but at least I'll know that Y may
take you longer.

Finally, as someone else's answer suggested, I want to know how you plan to
compensate for your weaknesses - you may not be good at proofreading your
work, but you've learned that you need to do abc in order to get a polished
product out the door. That tells me that you have a realistic assessment of
your own abilities plus you're able to work outside your comfort zone and
address the problem.  If you tell me you're not good at proofreading so you
never do it, then I'll suspect that I can't give you tasks you're not
comfortable with even though they need to be done.

To me, an interview is not a game - whether I'm the interviewer or the
interviewee. It's a way to get information that I can't get/give from a
piece of paper. I ask questions because I want to know, and I answer them
because I assume the person asking them wants to know. And for what it's
worth, if someone who wanted to work for me asked me what my biggest
weakness is, I'd probably tell them - they have to spend 5 days a week with
me so they may as well know ahead of time! Unless, of course, the question
was asked snidely in a game of one-upsmanship, in which case the person
doesn't really want to know.


Marie

Marie C. Paretti, PhD
Recognition Research, Inc. (RRI)
1750 Kraft Drive, Suite 2000
Blacksburg, VA 24060
mparetti -at- rrinc -dot- com
http://www.rrinc.com


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