stuart test blog

One of the interesting articles that popped up was how to prepare for an interview by prepping yourself with 50 common questions. The famous one that I’ve encountered often wasn’t there: “What’s your biggest weakness” but someone asked about it in the comments and got a harsh response.

The reply to the comment was that if anyone has asked you that question before, then they do not know what they are doing and probably shouldn’t be interviewing. He gave some examples of the typical, cliched answers and I must admit to the fact that I’ve used them all myself!

I’ve also asked the question to candidates while I was interviewing for engineers at the last company I worked at. But I worded it differently and my reason for the question was slightly more valid. I really wanted to find out what technical area the candidates thought they were weak in and how they planned to develop that. The typical answer was that SQL server was the weak spot, but that’s because the developers tended to configure it more often than the engineers.

But I guess it is a bit pointless so I’ll be sure never to ask that again!

Tags: interview, work, questions, answers, productivity