If we want to hire smart people, we should stop asking stupid questions. They ask the questions typically because officially once you walk in the door then they have decided if they like you or not or if they wish to pursue your candidate status.
In case you have not noticed, good people hate these following questions in their interview scanning process-
1. Why are you leaving your current company?
2. Where do you see yourself in 5 years ?
3. Why should we hire you ?
4. What are your weaknesses ?
People leave their employer due to poor management and lack of involvement in the growth of the employees. How many people leave in 1 year time because of this? People are mislead with broken promises 50% of the time. Take your applicant and turn the tables. Bring in 3 employees and CEO,VP higher management. Let the applicant do the interview. If the applicant is well educated will know to run it like a strategic meeting.
A company will hopefully realise there is a problem and correct it. Turn around of employees will slow down, and they will be doing interviews and hiring due to growth. I mean, a candidate's smartness and his hard working nature is measured by such stupid questions on his first visit to the company, how would he happily join that company or join with full satisfaction and then later on do his job and how could he enjoy the job he is doing?
Even, I don't like these kind of questions.
Q1. There are 101 reasons why we leave a company. And the common reason for everyone is for better pay check. I am sure what recruiters will make out of this question. Also, nobody will say a genuine reason.
Q2. It all depends of the organization structure and the open positions in a company if you would like to grow and many other factors.
Q3. Why did you open a position to recruit people or fill a position. That is a reason to hire me
Q4. Why do you want to know the weakness. Somebody's weakness maybe someone's strength. N I am 100 % sure no one will tell you their genuine weakness even if they have one.
Ask relevant questions related to the open position and questions which get's most out of the candidate whom you are interviewing. Like his attitude, how best he can get along with the colleagues, His Ideas, His Future Goals.
Nowadays people round very quickly and companies are also not too keen in retaining talents like they used too. Also people used to stay put for a long term benefit packages which has diapered , so the question is totally irrelevant !!
It's not irrelevant if you're a company deciding whether or not to invest thousands of dollars and who knows how much time training someone. You'd be surprised by how many people excitedly tell you about the business that they're less than a year away from launching or that they plan on moving to Korea to teach English. You wouldn't be a good steward of your organization's resources if you didn't at least attempt to inquire about a candidate's short term plans.
Trendiness needs a reality check. Anyway, good to see some thought is being centred on interview questions and their relevance. How unjust it is for your future, your career, your ambitions, your dreams and aspirations and chance to success depend one that person who possibly woke up on the wrong side or feels threatened or is not even best qualified to assess your candidacy.