Interview tomorrow - questions?

BligBlag

alenax wrote: »

1. What would you say your weaknesses are?

and

2. What makes you better than/sets you aside from other applicants?

I've had a lot of job interviews in my life, but I have never been asked these 2 questions.

Question 1, I guess you'd have to be careful with that, you don't want to put a prospective Employer off.

Question 2 is silly, you don't know the other applicants, so therefore can't know how you differ from them. Do interviewers really ask that question?

pineapple

I have just been asked exactly those two questions (and I got the job).
My weakness was tending to be a bit over keen and take too much upon myself (makes sense in the context of my last job). But I emphasised that I had worked on this and it was no longer much of an issue.
At which point the head of the interview panel nodded enthusiastically and said she was exactly the same!
My strength was lots of transferable experience and skills.

alenax

BligBlag wrote: »

I've had a lot of job interviews in my life, but I have never been asked these 2 questions.

Question 1, I guess you'd have to be careful with that, you don't want to put a prospective Employer off.

Question 2 is silly, you don't know the other applicants, so therefore can't know how you differ from them. Do interviewers really ask that question?

Yes, I've been asked both of these questions! The second one is silly now that you put it in that context but hey...

wuckfit

Yeah, that weakness one can be a bit of killer. I expect that "loose cars and fast women" as a response to that would probably be a mistake

I'm going to go and have a good think about what my proper answer to this question for the next time I go for interview - it might be something that somebody asks me.

Zazen999

alenax wrote: »

Hello everyone,

I have an interview tomorrow (though I'm not getting my hopes up) and I was thinking that there are 2 questions that I always tank on -

1. What would you say your weaknesses are?

and

2. What makes you better than/sets you aside from other applicants?

I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to answer those questions because I always draw a massive blank! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

In order to assist you with some answers to these questions, it might help if you told us
a - what your weaknesses are
b - what do you think makes you better than or sets you aside from other applicants.

Be very careful about saying 'not a weakness but really a strength'' ha he ha I'm so clever answers [not that you would] as interviewers could easily ask 'in what context', or 'could you explain how you have overcome that particular weakness in the past' or 'how has this manifested itself in your previous roles'; which would leave you royally stuck for words or bluffing like crazy.

gwinnie

Yes the strenght masquerading as weakness is old hat now. So give a real weakness but include a solution you have for overcoming it. Eg if you are not good with mental arithmetic, you can say you because you are not good at mental arithmetic, you never attempt it in a work scenario but always use a calculator, and always doublecheck your totals.

blckbrd

Might also be useful to know what industry or type of job.