It’s a bullshit question designed for gaming. If HR professionals were serious about it, they would ask you to talk about a task you had difficulty with and what you did to improve your ability to handle the task. It equally shows your ability to analyze your abilities and to plan how to improve.
Of course, if you were an HR professional with one-quarter of a brain, you wouldn’t even need to ask such a hackneyed question. All you have to do is ask people about work they have done in the past, and what problems they faced in pursuing that work. The stories will pop right out. You’ll be able to tell instantly how a person handles themselves in their work, and you don’t have to ask bullshit questions that get you bullshit answers 99% of the time. Now that’s what I call stupid.
In case background makes a difference in terms of the credibility of our answers on this question, I have a degree in human resources from one of the most highly ranked HR graduate schools in the nation. That’s all well and good. What I think really matters is that I have been hiring people for years and the people I hire are very good, and I have never asked a “canned” question in my life.
@Jude Funny. The education college where I work is generally considered to be a joke in the rest of the university. This seems to be true at other universities as well. They have a long way to go, I think, in becoming more academically rigorous. Part of that might be being more creative on the application interviews.