How do you answer this interview question? (1 Viewer)

[Sweet J]

Do you have kids?  Easy fallback.  Because the last three books I've read are The Animals Go to Bed, Five Little Monkeys and If You Give a Moose a Muffin.

Spoiler alert - the animals all make it to bed, the monkeys all bump their head, and feeding a wild moose is a bad idea.

That's all well and good, but if you give a Mouse a Cookie, all hell breaks loose. 

Or so I've read.  About a million times. 

 

[Ditka Butkus]

Read...I'm expected to be able to read?

 

[thecatch]

Except for this... the problem in this is about your assumptions. And this is why I was saying the error in these questions are that people will tend to think that are getting some great sneaky insight but it is really more about your own personal bias than anything else.

I have not had a chance to read a book in a while with three little kids but when I was reading regularly it would have been books like "Good to Great" and all three would have been along those lines. I tend to read books on business and leadership. I will sprinkle in books about military history and theology here and there though when I feel like breaking the mold.

The actual last three books that I have read and completed would have been:

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age

Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It

So, if I told you the truth your assumption would have been that I was full of ####, no?

If your personal interest in this material is genuine, it will most likely show through in how you deliver the answer. 

 

[Sweet J]

Except for this... the problem in this is about your assumptions. And this is why I was saying the error in these questions are that people will tend to think that are getting some great sneaky insight but it is really more about your own personal bias than anything else.

I have not had a chance to read a book in a while with three little kids but when I was reading regularly it would have been books like "Good to Great" and all three would have been along those lines. I tend to read books on business and leadership. I will sprinkle in books about military history and theology here and there though when I feel like breaking the mold.

The actual last three books that I have read and completed would have been:

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age

Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It

So, if I told you the truth your assumption would have been that I was full of ####, no?

The problem is most sane people don't want to work with people who read books like that regularly.

I'm not sure if I'm joking or not. 

 

[RUSF18]

really?  you see a weakness in the awareness of one's own shortcomings, a desire to learn more, and attempts to improve oneself?

I think that the reason for this question is not the books themselves, but to hear what you are interested in and why.  At an interview, you are selling yourself.  If you only read goofy books, you say "I read _______, and I know that doesn't make me sound very intellectual, but I like to have a work-life balance (or something like that) and I find that just being able to clear my mind with guilty pleasures from time-to-time to recharge."  If it was Time Management 101, I would say "I've been thinking about time management as a crucial issue facing everyone everywhere today.  I wanted to re-focus attention on that and start back with basic information to recalibrate.  And actually, one thing stood out to me, which seems so obvious but is often forgotten.  I've actually used it in the following ways . . ."

The problem is that it's played out, just like the "tell me about your weaknesses question" from 20 years ago when someone had the bright idea to turn those into positives and say "I work too hard! I'm too detail-oriented!" As you said, you should be able to sell yourself in an interview without literally going down the XX Improvement 101 road. If someone tells me they read a book about Amazon and how they've transformed into a juggernaut through innovation, I would respect that a lot more than if they read "How to Innovate in 2016!". 

 

[Chadstroma]

The problem is most sane people don't want to work with people who read books like that regularly.

I'm not sure if I'm joking or not. 

Again- your bias is reading into things more than they may or may be there. The failure I see in these questions is that it is really more about your bias than it is about the candidate.

One of my strengths is that nearly everyone I work with (or have worked with) enjoys working with me- be it my manager, support staff, peers, direct reports, etc. I have good relations with most everyone, people keep in touch with me, want to work with me again, etc.