What Are Your Strengths and Weaknesses?

This is a question for everyone, particularly those in the Human Resources, or Psychology majors out there. I hope you can shed some light into this question, as at the moment I can't seem to fanthom the significance and importance of certain "standard" interview questions, and I think I'd like to find out the perspective from where you are coming from. So, here goes, and my question is:

What is the point of asking people their strengths and weaknesses?

Let's setup the picture for a moment. You're interviewing job applicants, most of which you got from job hunters and direct applicants from your website. Most of them aren't internal referrals, so you can't ask for more information about the person from anyone at all. You can't know the person's credibility, personality, work ethics, motivations, ideals and core values up until the point where you come face to face with the applicant.

So why in the world will you be asking the person about his strengths and weaknesses?

You don't know this person. You don't know if the person is a world class liar. You don't know if this person is good at bullsh*tting, and you don't know if this is a type of person who can create flowery words to patronize you without you even noticing. We all know there are THOSE types of people. So why ask a person for his own opinion of himself? If you get someone who is truthful and frank, then its ok, but we all know that's not the case for everyone. People are guided by their own perspective of themselves, or even worse, some people are guided by their skewed motivations - as a result, some become very calculating about the things they say and do, sometimes to the point of deceit.

Lets see, if I were like that, as a job applicant who is in desperate need of a job, what's the best path that I will do?

1. Research extensively on the company, check out what types of people they want.
2. Create a list of positive traits. Use the web to search for positive, pro-active traits that are ideal for the position that you are applying for.
3. Review and rehearse the list of traits, so that the scripted traits will come out smoothly.
4. Use that for the interview.
5. Redo the same procedure for a different job, but change #2 so that it suits the next employer and job. Regardless if its true or not for your personality.

I'm sure this method will come out pretty smoothly... will work with convincing the HR interviewer of your "pleasant" and "proactive" personality...

Ok, I'm assuming here that everyone in the world is most likely a scheming, conniving chameleon. On a more subtle, and subconscious note, studies show that even if the person is perfectly honest, frank and trustworthly, differences in people's relative opinion and world outlook will skew their words as compared to the objective truth. (Is there even an objective truth?) You can read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, for that. He cites several examples of human perspective that essentially mentions that for most people, what we say does not always coincide with what we do. Its not a conscious fault, but there are things that are definitely happening on the subconscious level.

In the book's example, the initial question was to ask the subject if he considers himself racist or not. Then the subject will be exposed to a series of tests involving immediate reaction against pictures of different races. In a large number of the results, most people graded very poor against this. I actually took the test myself (it is found a Harvard site, and I'll be posting the full path shortly after I refer to my copy of the book)* and found that I graded slightly poor against my own perceptions. Horrible to find out? Yes. Does it answer my question? It seems so.

So the question remains, what is the purpose of directly asking an interviewee a direct question, asking him to elaborate on his personal strengths and weaknesses? Wouldn't a standard, normal conversation/inquiry be more appropriate in this case than directly asking an obvious question such as this?

I hope someone gives me an insight, just because, I'm not a Psychology major, and I really don't understand the significance and perspective. I'd like to know and if someone could kindly enlighten me with their own opinions and reactions, it'd greatly be appreciated.

As for now, I'll still keep on wondering...

*I made a mistake and thought that the test was from an MIT site. Turns out it is a Harvard site instead. The test is called the Implicit Association Test.