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Professional help for daring to question an interview process? - sounds like your a good groveller, maybe you should find some inner strength and a backbone.
Repeating or clarify does not change the question.
I appreciate the legal issues in ensuring that all potential employees are asked the same question.
However, as all the questions are scripted I get the feeling that most of the time they have decided based on your skills etc who they are employing and these questions are just designed to put you under pressure and their not that interested in the content of your answers, more about accessing your personality, how much you will cooperate and bend over backwards to please.
If it makes you feel better to pretend you are some kind of martyr, good luck with that. Again, your stated presumptions demonstrate that you do not understand how hiring processes work and, since you refuse to understand, you manufacture your own narrative to fill your psychological need.
Anyone ever refused to answer interview questions or walked out of an interview, I mean questions like what is your greatest achievement - its none their business, and most likely not related to the workplace.
What's your greatest weakness? - This is so generic, weakness in relation to what? and Why would you share your weaknesses with a bunch of strangers.
What would your last boss say about you? - insulting and offensive. saying that a bosses opinion is superior to your own.
Where will you be in five years time - coming from a organisations where your job in on the line every week, and will get rid of you at the drop of a hat.
Can you think of a time you went above and beyond your duty - again if you started doing other people jobs then you might get in trouble for stepping on someomes toes, or be told off for interfering in matters outside your job duties.
When interviewers ask these questions does it not just show their reading from a script, lack any kind of originality.
The more I think about it, interviews in corporate jobs are like this are just exercises in humilation, and the purpose of these type of questions is test your willingness to humilated, what lengths you will go, how much you can grovel.
How about refusing to answer these type of questions, or asking them for more detail, or asking them why they are just reading from a script
How about you do your homework on the latest interview techniques so you are prepared to answer them instead of jumping to so many incorrect conclusions? If you showed up for an interview I was conducting, it would set a record for the shortest one ever.
How else do you propose that a prospective employer gets to know who you are? Tarot cards?
To be fair, "generic" behavioral interview questions are a bad filter. Better than nothing, but not very good either. Best way to make a decision is back-channeling (they worked at company X five years ago and I know someone who did as well let me shoot them a call and see what they think about this person). Second to that are tests of actual skills used on the job. Third are case studies that get at related thinking, communicating and problem solving abilities. "What is your greatest weakness" is indicative of a bad interview process - of course, bad interview processes for good jobs are common enough you should smile, go along, and have an answer for the common ones rehearsed.
Just a way to see how quickly you think, how agreeable you are, how much of a team player.
If you had a face full of fishhooks, which one would you remove first? <--I had a supervisor ask me that one time.
Play the game. Understand the game and play it well. Don't take it so personally. Do you want the job or not?
I have had some questions asked that revealed volumes about the hiring personnel and I decided I wouldn't want to work with people who are willing to conduct interviews like that. I've got dozens of applications out there, have had interviews and will have more. Looking for a promotion before I retire. HOWEVER I'm not saying I'd take just any of them that are offered to me. If they play dirty on an interview - well, chances are they do that to eliminate all but the applicant they're preselected - and for some reason they select me, I don't have to accept the job. I turned down a job in New Orleans because I had just accepted a position in Hawaii.
If you feel these questions are designed to humiliate you, I suggest you get some professional help. Your presumptions are not grounded in reality.
They are stupid and humiliating but I don't think they are designed to be. HR is a profession that is the source of some of the most egregious junk science and nonsense in society today. People just come up with strange beliefs and it is very hard to dissuade them that they are wrong. I see it all the time in the food industry. Groups of consumers making all sorts of nonsense demands that wind up making food taste not as good and cost more for everyone so that manufacturers can put BS buzzwords like natural, and nonGMO on their labels.
I have never refused to answer but have withdrawn my app several times when it was clear the HR people were off their leash and just doing all sorts of BS like assigning essays like this was third grade, hour long junk science psychometric tests etc.
I've spent my life avoiding psychology since I have little respect for the profession and definitely don't appreciate it being rammed down my throat at work by hacks like HR.
Actually these questions are "gimmes". They are standard questions that have been asked in virtually every interview for the last 50 years. They aren't intrusive. They are a chance for the applicant to toot their own horn. Since you know the questions will be asked, you should have some basic answers ready, or at least two or three options for answers, and use the one that best suits the company, the position and the tone of the interview. Your answers provide insight into your personality and attitudes. These are really important factors in discovering if you will be a good fit for the position and the company. If you think they are designed to show "how you think on your feet", then you haven't been paying attention. You shouldn't have to think on your feet to answer these. These are simple questions that you KNOW they are going to ask. How does that require quick thinking? You are no better or smarter than the person doing the interviewing, and if you express disdain towards that person, or the company asking him to ask you these scripted questions, you can expect to never be employed by that firm.
If I were interviewing you and you refused to answer a simple question such as the ones you quoted in your OP, I would quickly and politely end the interview and not waste any more of your time, and mine. I do remember one smug little 25 year old twit who I was interviewing for a retail sales job. When asked the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" question he said he felt that he would be retired and living off his stock market investments. LOL. That application hit the round file before he made it out the door.
They are stupid and humiliating but I don't think they are designed to be. HR is a profession that is the source of some of the most egregious junk science and nonsense in society today. People just come up with strange beliefs and it is very hard to dissuade them that they are wrong. I see it all the time in the food industry. Groups of consumers making all sorts of nonsense demands that wind up making food taste not as good and cost more for everyone so that manufacturers can put BS buzzwords like natural, and nonGMO on their labels.
I have never refused to answer but have withdrawn my app several times when it was clear the HR people were off their leash and just doing all sorts of BS like assigning essays like this was third grade, hour long junk science psychometric tests etc.
I've spent my life avoiding psychology since I have little respect for the profession and definitely don't appreciate it being rammed down my throat at work by hacks like HR.
Just curious, are you a Scientologist? Your antipathy towards psychology is a bit extreme.
We aren’t talking about screening tests in this thread. We are talking about a few interview questions.
While I don't think those kinds of questions are intrusive, I don't like them as questions and don't use them when interviewing. Because they are nothing but a game and anyone who has taken 15 minutes to prepare is going to give pretty much the same pat, non descript answer. They tell you nothing at all about the person being interviewed. To me they say more about the HR interview process than anything else.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ALackOfCreativity
To be fair, "generic" behavioral interview questions are a bad filter. Better than nothing, but not very good either. Best way to make a decision is back-channeling (they worked at company X five years ago and I know someone who did as well let me shoot them a call and see what they think about this person). Second to that are tests of actual skills used on the job. Third are case studies that get at related thinking, communicating and problem solving abilities. "What is your greatest weakness" is indicative of a bad interview process - of course, bad interview processes for good jobs are common enough you should smile, go along, and have an answer for the common ones rehearsed.
You pretty much described everything about why I dislike those types of questions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlygal
What surprises me is that this seems to be most of the posts in the Employment section. Nothing but complaining instead of asking how can I reach xyz goal.
The problem many of us have with the whole "game" is a simple thing called integrity. When someone has integrity, they can't just switch it off to play the game. It's a part of their whole being. I don't go into an interview with a bad attitude, but I'm also not going to lie to provide some scripted answer that fits "what you are supposed to say." I don't want an employee who will tell me what he or she thinks I want to hear because then I would be a bad leader and as an employee I don't want to work for someone who would rather hear lies because they can't handle the truth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmy12345678
...
But acting like everything is perfect in the world and there's NOTHING to complain about is straight up ignorance. Some are too ignorant to differentiate between a legitimate complaint and whining, and seek to label any negative talk about anything as "whining"
...!
As I've gone along I've seen that exact thing more and more in the work world. A common tactic today is to say "stop whining" whenever someone disagrees. It's a great method to shut down all communication because it devalues both the issue and the person who brings it up. And far to often those issue are real and will come back to bit the organization later.
Important enough to be able to tell you to kiss off.
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