A Deep Sorrow For …"Where do you see yourself in 5 years".

The wonderful Mrs DSFW has secured a job in our kids’ school. Yes, DSFW, as in Deep Sorrow For Waste.

This is the self-selected moniker you will now know yours truly. It is the style used by proper bloggers: understood here as anyone that has been rambling online for more than 200 signs. Mr Money Mustache is known as MMM. The Escape Artist as TEA. But I digress.

So, my wife has secured a job in a local school by attending one of those rare interviews where the recruiter is not wasting your time asking one of that demi-dozens of questions that make anyone worth their weight in salt cringe:

1) What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses?

Answer: I am just awesome, it is written all over my CV.

2) Why should we hire you over other participants?

Answer: I never met them so I cannot really say.

3) How will you describe yourself in three words?

Answer: What you see’s…

4) How much you earn at your current job?

Answer: How much do YOU earn in this role?

5) How badly do you want this job?

Answer: I was just being curious, so I decided to book an entire day off, do some research on Internet and travel here unpaid for the mere satisfaction of seeing the parking lot.

Every man and his dog have been trained to answer these questions by saying the same nonsensical “I-am- a-detailed-oriented-juggler-that-works-too-hard-sometimes”, I still wonder why anyone recruiting someone valuable for their team will turn to this list of questions.

No, Mrs DSFW interviewed for a teaching assistant role and guess what, they decided to get her right in with a group of kiddos and an extract from Roald Dahl.

As a certified ... mother of 2, she went on to read the extract to the kids, pausing to ask questions about the story and providing some insights into the Viking origins of the great man. This went so well that they called her the same evening to inform that the job is hers.

Obviously, there was a second interview on the same day that covered all the logistics and safeguarding involved in bringing an adult into a school setting.

Anyone can sit in a meeting room and babble about how customer focused they are; the real candidate comes out of the wood when put into situation.

Take them for a lunch during the interview with other potential colleagues. Invite them to attend a real meeting where a problem need a solution and ask them at the end of the meeting their observations. And if it is perceived as a consulting exercise, commit to pay the individual.

The idea of believing you can gauge someone by only throwing stale questions at them for 90 minutes is archaic and only favor the showmen, the all talk, the confident, the folks quicker at building report…

These are all great characteristics for a certain number of roles where assertiveness outweigh judgement or empathy, where confidence may worth more than expertise or profound knowledge.

Unfortunately, often the candidate selected is the closest in temperament to the hiring manager. And because, the recruiting manager reached their own position via a good share of confidence, charisma (now and again read narcissism), there you get your group thinking as an add-on, the employee goes on to be an absolute corporate citizen, voicing opinions perfectly in line with what the leader want to hear.

Is there a remedy to this? Yes, it takes a recruiting manager to know exact nature of the pain the employee is brought in to resolved. It is not enough to open a new role just to replace a departing employee, one need to know exactly the sort of pain this role was helping with.

With that knowledge, the job description is written, and the questions are prepared with the objective of starting up a conversation about the pain on one side and the attitude, skills and knowledge needed to resolve this pain.

Nothing more nothing less, no need for questions on the type of animal you dream to be, your favourite movies or what do you dread about work (who out there is perfectly happy with every aspect of their day job anyway…)

DSFW