I often poke fun at my mistakes, and myself in as humorous a manner as I can. I regard most of my mishaps and stupidities as fodder for a good story to share with my friends and family.
I don’t think it’s appropriate at all in a job interview. The most dreaded interview or evaluation question for me is when they ask, “What weaknesses do you have?” or “Where do you think you need improvement?” Or the behavior type: “Tell us about a time you failed at a project, and how you handled it”.
What is the perfect answer for those types of questions? I’d love to know. I do better on the behavior ones, because I can usually come up with a situation where it wasn’t my own failure, other factors contributed...but I overcame it and succeeded, yada yada yada. Coming up with a weakness/fault that’s all my own – that’s a tough one in a job interview. I think on the last interview I actually said, “I really can’t think of any”. Probably a crummy answer, but I did end up with the job.
