I’ve hired dozens of people and I’ve interviewed hundreds. As a manager (area of business development), my objective is simple: get the interviewee talking. I know their CV and have checked their social media; I know my favorite candidates. I just want to check whether I “like the person”, and whether she/he is as good in real life as on paper. My typical interviews run like this: “first, I will tell you about the position for a few minutes, then you will have time to tell me about yourself, and to ask YOUR questions. And then we talk about possible next steps. This will take about 30 minutes. Is that OK?” I try to get onto an equal footing, and although I will ask simple questions here and there, I skip all the humbug, curve ball, aggressive stuff (they probably have pre-prepared answers to those anyway). By laying out the interview plan first, good candidates have sufficient time to prepare their story and clever questions in their head while I make the company pitch.

I like this take from smbc

Where do you see yourself in X years?

Just be honest: Will you ditch us for the next best opportunity?

And answer: it depends.

All in all, that question is useless.

I don’t understand your point. The interviewer asks that question to understand why does the candidate think the position is a good fit for them. If you don’t think that it is a particularly good fit for you, you just need a job, that is information for the interviewer. They receive a hundred applications and have to pick a good one. Can you imagine that there are other candidates who actually have a really good reason why they applied for this particular position?

The gap in my employment is NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS.

It's none of your fucking business that my kid required major neuro surgery at the age of 8 WEEKS and I needed to take a year off form work to care for him.

You and all the other idiot corporations decided to fuck around with the economy and didn't hire anyone for several years because YOU fucked it up.

To be more flexible I decided to work a series of contracts instead of full time employment and fuckwits like you treat contractors like trash.

Do you really want me to go on? Because I fucking can...

BTW: The kid is OK and today (19 years later) is an accomplished figure skater that competes internationally.

I've interviewed people before, and am doing so again next week. I often ask why a candidate is interested in working for my org, because I want to known that their personal goals/ambitions are at least somewhat aligned with the org. Hiring someone and then finding out that they don't fit sucks.

Many job ads receive tens or hundreds of applications. They want the best candidate. If you're not specifically keen, they'll probably go for someone who shows some interest. I know I have picked people who are interested over more qualified but disinterested people before.

Expecting answers in the STAR format is my number one complaint. No one talks like that.

Honestly I just hate personality based questions. I'm here to do a job and get paid. I'm not here to make friends and honestly don't care enough to try working my way up some corporate ladder that requires connections and kissing ass. If the job just has me pulling around slabs of meat or cutting them up, why are you asking about my personal life? Ask to give examples of me doing similar work.

"Who are you and what are you doing in my office?"

We ask why you applied to our company specifically to screen for candidates that are excited about the product and its mission. Granted, I do work in the space industry.

"Where do you see yourself in the future?" Who fucking knows at this point, hopefully ALIVE.

"What do you expect for compensation?" Just tell me what the low end of the job is because I know that's what you're going to pay anyway.

"Can you explain this gap in your resume?" Can you explain these gaps in your employing someone in this position?

How many r's in the word strawberry

"Wanna get out of here?"

Also a bit weird to ask what hobbies i have if its asked early on int interview and for a very in and out job like supermarket staff

This is gonna be more of a rant about recruitment agencies and the consultants working for them.

When I apply for one of the (probably fake) positions they advertise, it's not an invitation for them to ring me, waste 15 minutes of my life and grill me about everything I did in my last few jobs, my responsibilities, duties, any employment gaps, people who I answered to in my previous company, etc; only for these assholes to tell me they have no positions available but will "keep my details on file."

It's on my fucking resumé, and you could save a lot of our time by not ringing me and asking me to verbally repeat this because you guys are too stupid to read...

When I was made redundant last year and was basically desperate to land another role, I genuinely had some of the worst cold-calls ever from recruiters when I made the rookie error of listing myself as open to work on LinkedIn and Indeed. One particular caller who I spoke to twice, maybe three times would genuinely pause for about 10 to 15 seconds in silence after I finished speaking then ask me some absolutely mundane follow-up question in a monotone voice. I genuinely couldn't tell if I was speaking to a lady with a room-temperature IQ or some poorly programmed AI chatbot.

On a related note, posting ghost vacancies, using AI to screen candidates, and generally treating recruitment as a massive data harvesting operation should be made illegal.

My least favorite is, "where do you see yourself in 5 years?"

"Ummm, getting your job after I push you in front of a train for asking me this stupid question."