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Do you think "what is your greatest weakness?" encourages you to lie? If you ask "what is your dream job, and your dream salary" you will get a dishonest answe
by learc83 11y ago
Do you think "what is your greatest weakness?" encourages you to lie?
If you ask "what is your dream job, and your dream salary" you will get a dishonest answer 9 times out of 10. Why encourage dishonesty. Why not just ask "what do you like about being a developer?" Or "describe your ideal developer work environment?"
>Sometimes hiring managers are currently trying to fill N positions, with a few more that are opening soon but aren't even posted yet. You may be interviewing for job A when and even better fit, job B, is on offer if you don't play around with this sort of questioning. It's a shame to miss opportunities like that...
This question isn't going to help very much with that because almost everyone is going to lie and say their dream job is the job they are interviewing for. And if they don't lie, they're going to say that it's something like billionaire philanthropist, President of the United States, or Batman.
- nik_0_0 11y agoAs the author states in the article, there is a limitation of "you start on Monday". This rules out the billionaire philanthropist, POTUS, and batman. What is your dream job given your skills, your resources and ability, that you could operate at within a week.
- learc83 11y agoAnd yet he says you can set your own salary. I'm pretty sure I could operate just fine on monday as a billionaire philanthropist given that I get to set my own salary. Setting aside hyperbole, I can think of several practical things I'd rather do than what I'm doing now, but I don't do them because they don't pay well, and I enjoy my current profession well enough. If I could set my own salary, I'd like to run a barbecue restaurant, write for a newspaper, make computer games, or build robots. However, none of those pay well enough (or I lack the credentials--and time to get the credentials--to make them pay well enough), so they are relegated to hobbies.
- wallyhs 11y agoThe salary isn't the point: > I immediately exclude discussion of company, title, and salary, because these are the things people think they want but can't really affect my decision. > So by stating that these three things, company, title, and salary, are already taken care of, it frees candidates to think about what really matters to them.
- learc83 11y agoSalary matters in that it allows you to pick jobs that aren't ordinarily practical. Most people have something else they would be doing if salary weren't a constraint. So the honest answer isn't likely to be a job like the one the candidate is interviewing for, but most people will be dishonest and say that the job they are applying for is their dream job because that's what they think the interviewer wants.
- sheepmullet 11y ago> The salary isn't the point Except it is. I earn 3x more as an enterprise developer than I could as a games developer and work significantly fewer hours. The truth is spending time with my family, and having the money to support them, is more important than having my "ideal" job.
- wingerlang 11y agoHE specifically says you can NOT set the salary. > It's at your ideal company with your ideal job title and salary. This means that your title/company/salary is already set in the question.
- learc83 11y agoNo, he just says you don't discuss it. It's my ideal salary. Who else get's to decide what my ideal salary is other than me?
- wingerlang 11y agoI guess you're right. But I also think you're missing the point. The point is to focus on the work itself, not the surrounding information.
- ska 11y agoThe problem with "what is your greatest weakness?" and the like is that the person asking doesn't actually want an honest answer. I'd probably re-word the OP's question a little bit to make it more clear, but it is a fundamentally different style of question, and can be quite useful.