How do you answer “What is Your Greatest Weakness?” Job Interview Question or JIQ #2 “Our greatest weakness is that, We are unwilling to accept our weaknesses.” If you are subjected to this question in a job interview – “What is your greatest weakness?” what will be your response or reaction? You would have been bowled over by the time your brain scans for some reply (way-out) that would be appropriate. This kind of a question can potentially damage or salvage your job prospects – Yes! It solely depends on how honest you are in dealing with your own weaknesses or short comings and also how wisely you are able to turn it to your advantage. Your response tells the interviewer a lot about your uprightness, so it unquestionably holds a lot of weight.”     “To err is human But to forgive is not in an interviewer’s agenda.”   Never choose a weakness that indicates your inappropriateness for the job: “A salesman has to be good at communication” “An accountant needs to be good at calculations” “A teacher has to have a patient attitude to manage the students” Will you hire a person with quick temper for a customer relationship position? Will you hire somebody who lacks charisma to be a team-leader?   Here, we are just not talking about the technical skills alone, but also about attitude and emotional traits of a person that define his/her personality.   Remember that a weakness isn’t necessarily bad: So, the main idea of throwing this question in an interview is not to pull your legs down (though sometimes the interviewee falls a prey by his own naivety), but to gauge how well you can handle or had handled a pressure-situation in previous jobs. Try not to expose your personal weakness- If you say you can’t get up early in the morning, do you think your hiring manager will appreciate the idea? Try to rationalize how you transformed a weakness into strength by perception and perseverance in a purely job-related context.   Don’t blurt stereo-type answers: Be direct in your approach and avoid stereo-type answers which will irritate the interviewers; I’m a perfectionist, I pay attention to detail, I never relax, I’m a workaholic- all these responses will sure-fire you from the prospective list. These are neither strengths nor weaknesses but only hypocritical projections of your “self.” These kind of compliments should come from people around you and sometimes it is funny how the greatest strength becomes the greatest weakness too.   Do Your Homework Properly: Think about this, if you are a workaholic who spends 15 hours a day adding prosperity to the company, your boss might be happy, but will your wife and children be happy? I’m able to feel the heat from the women folk – the same applies to you too. Though the subject deviates to work-life balance, the undercurrent of the discussion is not to mention your weakness that is directly related to the job you are applying for. Do your homework properly by analyzing the job specification and description thoroughly and decide if you will fit the bill. Mention the areas you are trying to improve upon; you can very well say, “I’m trying to improve my prioritization skills which would help me to line up tasks and complete projects well within the time limit.” You can highlight how you were an introvert and how you have transformed yourself as a “people-person” by realizing that it is the order of the day to be successful in a professional environment. Avoid Rehearsed answers: “If you don’t know your weakness, take a personality type quiz and the results...

Social Media Recruiting Finding the right job is a herculean task and it reminds me of this saying, “When you want to have something you’ve never had,  You have to do something you’ve never done.”   Job Hunting: I would rather use the term ‘Job Hunting’ than ‘Job Searching’ because competition is so much so that you feel lost in the crowd. The job market scenario does not look very appealing in spite of being well-qualified for the respective positions. Everybody talks about ‘Cracking the Jobs with Hacking the Resumes’ and ‘Preparing a killer resume that is likely to pull you towards a dream job’.     The sad part of the story is, “Dream jobs never exist and how can you land on something that is not there?” Of course, I go with you, ‘Resumes are indispensable for kick-starting the process; yet you need that extra something, which I would like to call the ‘J’ factor (people are getting bored of ‘X’ factor ‘J’ stands for job factor).   Social Media Networking: Let me put it simply; you have to get noticed to capture the plum job. Market yourself in such a way that recruiters can never say no. Well, you guessed it right, “SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKING” within quotes is the need of the hour and NOW-A-DAYS recruiters gauge the personality of the prospective candidates through social media networking sites like FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND LINKEDIN. Are you a people-person? Social media recruiting has become indispensable and most of the recruiting agencies overlook traditional channels like employment exchanges and classifieds and prefer the former source as the approach is more direct and focused. If you have a well-built profile in Facebook or LinkedIn your chances of landing on an enterprising job is guaranteed. Further. if you are an active member of a LinkedIn group or a Google Community, you stand a bright chance to capture the attention of big recruiters searching for the right talent. How prepared are you? The question is ‘How prepared are you to link a bait’ and ‘What are your chances?’ Social media recruiting has become a routine process in most of the ‘top-most’ companies and if you are not aware of the significance, you have everything to lose. Try to understand that, 40% of people socialize more online than they do face-to-face, 100.000 tweets are sent, 2 million queries are searched on Google and 684.478 pieces of content are shared on Facebook every minute. (Statistics courtesy- http://www.onrec.com/) Bumper Benefits for the recruiter: By using social media as a recruiting source companies straight away Cut the exorbitant outsourcing bill payments to external HR agencies as this is completely free Direct contact with the candidate and can assess his personality first hand Word of mouth referrals through social media (Social media is modern day word of mouth marketing) do the companies and employers Himalayan good by making prospective candidates stand in queue before them which otherwise proves to be a tough and expensive task. There is less spam as the communication is transparent that proves to be a win-win situation for both, the employer as well as the potential candidate Employers can bang on their potential targets by clear-cut job specifications and LinkedIn proves to be the top most destinations for social media recruiters. Social media recruiting fits companies of varying sizes and spheres In a single click the employers and recruiters have access to almost all information needed to write an authentic ‘Biography’ about you. If LinkedIn profile supplies professional information, Facebook shows your personal side. It raises a question though, ‘Are you social media-responsible?’, In other words ‘Are you behaving properly in the virtual...