The Worst Interview Question Ever

“What is your greatest weakness?” is the worst interview question, ever.

Here’s why you should be asking candidates about their greatest strength. 

What is your greatest weakness? If there was such a thing as a universally despised interview question, this would top the list. Sell me this pencil is a close second.

Job candidates hate this question because it puts them in an impossible situation. On the one hand, they could actually admit their greatest weakness. But, would you hire someone who told you that they were unorganized or tended to butt heads with his or her coworkers? On the other hand, he or she could lie and spin a strength. Sometimes I’m too hardworking. Of course you are. The last time I was interviewing for jobs, I mastered the art of cheeky avoidance. I possess super-human strength, but only when I’m angry.

The interviewers, for their part, hate this question because it’s cliché, and because they know it will be met with a B.S. answer, no matter how cleverly they ask. My favorite example is, tell me why, in five years, I have to fire you. My favorite answer? Economic downturn.

And, even if we managed to get a completely honest answer, would it even matter? The answer is no, for three reasons:

First, they probably don’t know the answer. A 2006 analysis of 360-degree ratings showed strong a correlation between peer and supervisor ratings, but there was only a modest correlation between self-supervisor and self-peer ratings. In other words, most people have no idea how the rest of the world sees them. As one of my colleagues often puts it, everyone thinks they are smart, funny, and great in bed, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Next, anyone with the level of self-awareness it takes to actually pinpoint their greatest weakness (and the cajones to tell you) likely also possesses the presence of mind to put mechanisms in place to prevent that weakness from impacting his or her performance. For example, someone who knows that he or she tends to procrastinate (like me) will set hard deadlines for him or herself and use scheduling and productivity apps to keep them on track. Finally, most of your hires won’t fail because of their greatest weakness. Most of them will fail because they overplay their greatest strength. Here’s the science: a 2009 study of personality information from 126 managers and performance ratings from 1,500 of their coworkers showed that, as levels of certain strengths increased past a certain point, their effectiveness decreased. Anyone who has been in the workforce long has seen how this plays out. An ambitious new employee on your sales team turns cutthroat under the pressure to meet his or her numbers, and starts competing with members of his or her own team. Or, a detail-oriented accounting manager turns into a micro-manager.

I’m certainly not saying that weaknesses don’t impact our performance — they do. But weaknesses are easy to spot, and easy to compensate or correct. Because overused strengths are born in our blind spots, they can be hard to spot until they’ve already had a devastating effect.

Identity Vs. Reputation II

Every group I speak to about identity vs. reputation, it seems, contains at least some people who are outraged by the notion that, at Hogan, we focus on reputation while ignoring identity. I think I have heard cries of “Witch!”  “Scofflaw!”  “Heretic!”  “Hotdog!”  from the back of some conference rooms (OK, I might have heard that last one at a baseball game) when I have stated that we focus on making predictions on the basis of one’s reputation, and that we really don’t care so much about trying to make predictions (about job performance, potential, etc.) from one’s identity. Given the outrage that statement produces from some people, I thought it might be useful to clarify 3 points here for those clinging to the notion that identity is the most important—or only—thing to study about the individual if you want to make predictions about the workplace.

The first reason Hogan focuses on reputation is that it is well-understood and easy to study. After all, at Hogan, we like to save time at the end of the day for happy hour, so why not use time efficiently by focusing on phenomena that are scientifically observable, well-researched, and well-understood, rather than spending time on issues like identity, for which there is no measurement base and no consistent measurement taxonomy despite about 100 years of discussion and research. When the Big 5 emerged 60 years or so ago, the study of personality changed; modern views of the structure personality start with the Big 5, or the structure of personality from the observer’s point of view, rather than starting from one’s identity. Using identity as a starting point for studying personality in the workplace at this point in history would be akin to the modern medicine using the medieval diagnostic technique of discerning imbalances in the 4 bodily humours. 

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Identity Vs. Reputation

Here at Hogan we have a lot of conversations about pretty complicated stuff, and odds are, if you are reading this, you have at some point been on the other end of one of those conversations. It is always our goal to simplify concepts into language that is more readily understood. It’s not that we are more intelligent than those with whom we speak, but we live and breathe personality assessment and the vast majority of people (read: normal people) don’t. One concept that seems frequently misunderstood is identity vs. reputation. Identity is how we view ourselves, reputation is how others view us. Read More »

EQ and Healthcare

  Patient safety is a major concern for the medical industry. A study in the Journal of Patient Safety found between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, and a separate study found that nearly one third of medical injuries were due to error, costing patients and hospitals more than $1 billion each year. Read More »

The Glorification of Busy

Why is everyone so damn busy? It seems that the response to "How are you?" on conference calls or conversations with friends results in my least favorite word - busy. Most of the insanely busy people I know aren't working multiple jobs or balancing family and work. The full calendar is a result of choice rather than sheer workload. Busyness isn't a badge of honor anymore… it just makes you look self-important (and self-loathing).

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Does My Team Have My Back? Yes, Indeed.

  In preparation for my upcoming maternity leave, I have been thinking a lot about the benefits of working as a part of a high functioning team. The stress and uncertainty of stepping away from my job and leaving my duties in the hands of others has the potential to bring out my derailers in full force….Hello, Bold and Diligent. However, working in a high-functioning, team-based environment has assuaged my dark side and I am feeling pretty good about shutting down for a bit. So what is so great about my team? Read More »

Women in Leadership Series: Part II

In the previous blog in this series my colleague, Miranda Hanes, discussed the percentage of women moving into leadership roles and the decidedly lower representation of women at the highest ranks in the organization. She posed the question, “Where are they?” I would like to expand upon Miranda’s blog by posing another question, “Where did they go?” We know that women comprise about 50 percent of the workforce and approximately 30 percent of managerial and supervisory roles, but very few women ascend to the C-suite in organizations. So the question, in my opinion, becomes what happens during women’s career progression that causes them to break the glass ceiling and ascend the career ladder, and why do so many women go over the glass cliff? Is it due to a lack of skill and competence, a matter of cultural fit, the need for work/life balance, or is it simply burnout and frustration with the need to work smarter and harder to reach the top spots. Read More »

SIOP 2014 Symposium: From Leader’s Personality to Employee Engagement

  Extensive research highlights the importance of work engagement – employees’ morale and involvement with work – as determinant of individual and organizational performance. Large-scale studies show that engagement is positively correlated with a wide range of important business outcomes, such as organizational commitment, citizenship, innovation, and team performance, and negatively correlated with turnover intentions, strain, and burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Seibert, Wang, & Courtright, 2011). Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence indicates that higher engagement levels are directly translated into higher business revenues and profits (Harter et al, 2009). These findings have prompted organizations to monitor engagement levels via regular employee surveys. According to Gallup, who surveys millions of employees every year, only 30% of Americans are engaged at work, and the most common reason for disengagement is employees’ direct boss or line manager. Thus leadership is a critical antecedent of engagement (Wollard & Shuck, 2011). Read More »