[halviti]

This is largely a regional/cultural thing..

In Europe people tend to care more about these things because they're interested in creating a good healthy workplace. If you only wrote about your professional achievements, it would be a sign that your lack of a personality could cause problems within the workplace.

Everyone is different and there is no one-size-fits-all thing here that works for every country / job opportunity.

[ajuc]

I'm from Europe :) Poland to be exact. And I care about healthy workspcae, but I don't think anything said on interview can be an accurate indicator. It's inherently misleading situation, like a first date almost.

I was only asked similar question once on an interview for a foreign (Lithuanian FWIW) company ("do you have wife, children?"). It was jarring to me, I assumed they wanted to know if I'll be OK with crunch time. Maybe it's the way they asked (like another thing from a checklist).

[kyllo]

And it's also much harder in Europe to fire a problem employee.