Everything in a job interview should be to frame you in a positive light.
I see way too many candidates try and play the humble route, and all it does is sell them short. There’s a fine line between too humble and too full of yourself , and neither side is good to find yourself on. This particular question seems to me to be too humble.
Questions like this may seem like it makes the candidate seem humble and open to feedback, but in actuality whenever someone has asked something like this it has made them appear insecure and planted more seeds of doubt in the interviewers mind since they now have to think about their shortcomings.
Maybe phrasing it a better way would help:
“What qualities are you looking for, for this role?” “Are there things you think i should brush up on , assuming I get this role?” “Where do you see me best being able to contribute in this role?”
Those questions give you the same data points, leaving you to infer where you may be lacking. It leaves the interviewer with a sense of your confidence without seeming too full of yourself, and generally the wording makes them consider you as if you’re in the role, versus not in it.
Again, a job interview is a sales pitch. People should be honest while balancing keeping the tone positive.
You wouldn’t sell a car by pointing out its flaws. Don’t sell yourself the same way.
Personally I don't think it sounds either arrogant or humble overall, plus it shows a willingness to discuss difficult things in a polite manner (at least the question as stated above was polite) which is also a plus for a candidate.
Related - Once viewing a house to buy I asked the seller, is there anything you think I should know about this house that I haven't asked about. Their reply turned out to be a deal breaker (at the time - maybe it would have been fine but the point is we got a lot more information! )
This works because that's the reason why the company is interviewing people - they have a problem they need to solve. Be that solution.
If this question turns a company off, both the company and candidate have obtained a critical piece of information.
The fact that anyone would be surprised by that is a sad indictment on our culture.
It’s a subconscious thing, but you really don’t want people to start thinking negatively about you, because it can cause that negativity to linger and affect your assessment. You especially don’t want someone to end an interview on the negative note. Do it in the middle if you have to but make sure you start and end positively
Again, there’s a fine line between too much humility and too much hubris. Humility is fine in moderation , but you have to keep from being excessive or you do a disservice to yourself as much as overselling yourself.
Also though I agree with quietbritishjim's take, from the other side of the table I would actually read the question as confident. I'm British as well. Cultural thing maybe.
For example, I talked to someone on Friday about a bioinformatics job. In passing, the manager remarked, "So you probably don't have any experience analyzing gene networks...." While that's true, I have done other graph theory/network analysis work that uses the same mathematical tools, so we talked about that for a bit. Without that offhand comment, though, I'm not sure how I would have gone about making my case.
However, I'd carve out an exception. In an interview where you have, without a doubt, not done well and there's greater than a 80% chance that you feel you won't proceed, this question may potentially be a good hail mary, for salvaging the interview.
But, I've never used the technique before. And unless you have alot of interview experience, it will also be difficult to make judgement calls on how well or bad an interview has gone.
Any sales person that does their pitch then just goes "welp, see ya later" at the end has no business being in sales.
It's akin to asking someone in a date "any reason why you wouldn't like me?". It feels like lacking confidence and anticipating rejection.
This question could make sense if you don't get an offer. If you get a chance to talk to the recruiter, you can ask them if there are particular things you could try to improve if you were to interview again at their company.
If 'having a degree' is a 'big deal' for the company, it's probably not the best place to work anyway.
But what that question might uncover is that the interviewer is concerned that because you lack a degree, you might lack some CS background. That's a valid concern that you could refute by talking about how you've learned a lot on your own.
It's hard to fake having an engineering education, and if you have one it should show in an interview whether or not you have the degree.
Which I learned because I'm curious, not because I have a degree in anything related.
Why? Because impressions matter and will frame you as "X", until you strongly challenge and overthrow that initial impression.
"An adiabatic process occurs without transferring heat or mass between a thermodynamic system and its surroundings. Unlike an isothermal process, an adiabatic process transfers energy to the surroundings only as work."
True. What I usually do is point out the amount of hours it would take to get a PhD on average, and compare it to the number of hours I've spent furthering my education and honing my craft. It is in fact more time spent than it would take to obtain a PhD.
Additionally it comes off as insecure. Like you can’t tolerate the idea that you might actually have made mistakes or lacked skills or fluffed your resume or communicated badly, and you deserve a chance to debate your way out of it.
Finally it also seems like fishing for negative feedback you can disagree with later. You likely won’t get significant feedback after the interviews are over since companies don’t reveal it for legal reasons, so you’re trying to get interviewers off-guard to get that feedback and later act like it’s unfair.
As an interviewer I would strictly reply that I need to write down my notes from the interview, review and analyze them, and compare notes in the debrief session before I will develop any type of feedback, positive or negative. The interview itself is a place for information exchange, and trying to form opinions about positives / negatives on the spot amplifies the likelihood of bias or lack of context.
The rest of it is just simply the facts of interviewing pretty much anywhere. I’ve seen it happen much more strongly in young startups than big corporations, but it’s extremely common everywhere.
Small startups usually have fewer formalized practices in recruiting and less standardized HR practices, which leads to more bias and unfair judgment calls in recruiting compared with larger companies, not less.
You definitely have to ask it in a very secure way.
If done the right way, I'd find it quite impressive!
Someone who can bring up difficult topics and talk about them in a productive way is a huge asset to most teams.
And everybody will know that you either seriously lack substance or that you are clearly lying.
You can say whatever you want to the interviewee because if that goes to court it’s their word against yours. That works both ways of course, but at least allows people to say whatever they really mean rather than keeping someone in ignorant bliss.
That being said it only applies to countries where recording someone against their will is illegal.
Sure, you may be a reasonable person and have a reasonable answer for their concern, but they don't know it.
I feel like I’m missing your point here... you are correct - when I’m doing a coding interview, I don’t care if you’re black or white, male or female, university educated or self-taught, the only thing I care about is whether or not you can code[1]. You seem to be suggesting that that’s a bad thing?
[1] Of course any major red flags like muttering racist curses when you get frustrated would also be noted; it’s not like I ignore the human side of things, I’m just not actively looking for that~
It might be a little uncomfortable for someone like me. I'd rather you ask, "what are your favorite qualities in your best employees" and then respond to that.
Maybe it's just my area of work but I can't imagine caring about previous experience, degree, or anything. I mean, the candidate has gotten past the resume screen already so you're just living up to that impression and other candidates at that point.
"Are there any concerns you may have that I can address that may lead you to believe I'm not the right candidate?"
I've been able to address: lack of previous experience, lack of a degree, time in between jobs, time spent at the last job, all thanks to this question.