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Snappy answers to stupid interview questions
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It's hard to go on job interviews, one after the other.
It's bad enough if the employer representatives are friendly and professional. It's agonizing if they're not.
Here are some of the idiotic and insulting interview questions you may be asked, with snappy answers for each. You may not actually open your mouth and say these things, but you can be thinking about them while you say, "Why, let me think about that....I guess if I had to be any kind of Campbell's Soup, I'd be vegetable - being as conscious of Mother Earth as, of course, I am."
Stupid Interview Question: Why should we hire you, above the other candidates?
Snappy answer: My gosh, I wouldn't recommend doing that. I haven't met those other people, and unless this is the tail end of the interview process, you haven't either. It's very important to meet people before we evaluate them, in my opinion. Also, I'm not sure yet that I want to work here, and it would be a shame for you to reject a bunch of other people in order to make me an offer and then to have me say "No, I've decided to work somewhere else." Don't you think?
Stupid Interview Question: What is your greatest weakness?
Snappy answer: I have a weakness for chocolate.
Stupid Interview Question: Where do you see yourself in five years?
Snappy answer: I'll be pretty much where I am now, doing things that make me happy and spending my working time among smart and capable people. What about you?
Stupid Interview Question: If you were an animal, what kind would you be?
Snappy answer: I'd be an Ebola virus so I could infect your competition. Or a dust mite, so I could cling to the security guard's pants leg or the bottom of his shoe and come in to the office and get more work done after midnight. Although I'm not sure I'd be able to use a mouse.
Stupid Interview Question: What do people say about you?
Snappy answer: I heard a lady behind me at the supermarket say about me "Her highlights are exactly the color I want." But her hair was kind of dark - I don't think she'd get this color, frankly, no matter what she uses.
Stupid Interview Question: Can you verify your last salary?
Snappy answer: I want to make sure that I understand -- your company doesn't know what skills on the market are worth, so you rely on what some other, unrelated company has paid a person to determine what to pay that person yourselves? Oh dear, that is unfortunate. There is a tool that would make this sort of antiquated process obsolete for you - it's called the Internet. I could show you how to use it, if you're not sure. It would be my pleasure.
Stupid Interview Question: The bottom eighty percent of employees are dramatically less productive than the top twenty percent. What puts you in the top twenty percent?*
Snappy answer: Goodness gracious, I would feel very sorry for an organization where the leadership is so poor that eighty percent of the staff is unproductive. That sounds like a management problem. Surely you don't have that problem here? No, of course not - if you did, that would be very embarrassing for your company to admit to total strangers, like me.
Stupid Interview Question: Do you have any regular weekend or evening conflicts we should know about?
Snappy answer: Only one, that I think of as My Life, which requires me to go to events and spend time alone and read and bathe and eat and so on. That's a fixed obligation - I'm afraid it would be simply impossible for me to budge that one. As I understand it, there's a halfway house here in town that might be able to supply you with employees who have fewer such entanglements. Perhaps not, though - from what I understand, they're very big on promoting self-esteem in that program. Wish I could be of more help. :-)
*overhead during a job interview at a KFC in Boulder County, Colorado, 2008
Liz Ryan is a career consultant who helps smart people get good jobs using non-traditional job-search techniques. Liz is a former Fortune 500 HR VP and one of the country's most widely-read and well-respected workplace experts. She's the Networking Expert for Yahoo! Hot Jobs, the Workplace Expert for Business Week Online, a commentator for CNN and BBC Radio and a blogger at the Huffington Post as well as a career advice expert for Glassdoor.com. Liz lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and kids, and sings opera and musical theater when she's not advising job-seekers, working people, HR leaders, entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. Liz is a sought-after keynote speaker on HR, leadership, social-media and entrepreneurial topics, and leads job-search and career-development workshops as well as consulting with job-seekers individually. Visit Liz's website, Ask Liz Ryan, join her 25,000-member online community, or reach Liz here.
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