TRAPS: Watch out!
This question can derail your candidacy faster than a bomb under the tracks --
and just as you're about to be hired!
Reason: No matter how bright you are, you cannot know the
right actions to take in a position before you settle in and get to know the
operation's strengths, weaknesses, key people, financial condition, methods of
operation, etc. If you lunge at this
temptingly baited question, you will probably be seen as someone who shoots
from the hip.
Moreover, no matter how comfortable you may feel with your
interviewer, you are still an outsider.
No one, including your interviewer, likes to think that a know-it-all
outsider is going to come in, turn the place upside down and with sweeping,
grand gestures, promptly demonstrate what jerks everybody's been for years.
BEST ANSWER: You, of
course, will want to take a good, hard look at everything the company is doing
before making any recommendations. Example: "Well, I wouldn't be a very
good doctor if I gave my diagnosis before the examination. Should you hire me, as I hope you will, I'd
want to take a good hard look at everything you're doing and understand why
it's being done that way. I'd like to
have in-depth meetings with you and the other key people to get a deeper grasp
of what you feel you're doing right and what could be improved. From what
you've told me so far, the areas of greatest concern to you are..." (Name
them. Then do two things. First, ask if these are in fact his major
concerns. If so, then reaffirm how your
experience in meeting similar needs elsewhere might prove very helpful).
