What is an interviewer looking for you to say when they ask this question? How would you personally answer this?

My short game

Always answer with kryptonite...

I have always heard to answer this by saying an area that you don't believe you'll ever work or something you will hardly do. For example, if you are applying for an HR position, you could say working with working on data analysis is not one of your strong points.

Weaknesses that aren't really "weak" like "I work too hard" or "I get too attached to my work" or "taking criticism too seriously"

That or offer up weaknesses with fixes attached to them like "I always try to mitigate my weaknesses when I notice them. I don't have exposure to this or that. I've signed up for a class to address that gap."

^
Those are some pretty lame responses. Are you you really suggesting that "I work too hard" is a good answer? Nobody would take you seriously.

[This message has been edited by Are you a Wizard (edited 1/22/2014 12:27p).]

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Those are some pretty lame responses. Are you you really suggesting that "I work too hard" is a good answer? Nobody would take you seriously.

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The irony here, is that I can never take a company that asked this question seriously.


My canned response to this question is "Looking at my career, I have come to realize that my appetite for risk is much greater than it should be at this point in my career. I am still trying to swing for the fences, (start-ups, accepting new challenges, that kind of thing) when I should be focused getting base hits and driving the winning run home."

from "The Office"...

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David: So, let me ask you a question right off the bat. What do you think are your greatest strengths as a manager?
Michael: Why don't I tell you what my greatest weaknesses are? I work too hard. I care too much. And sometimes I can be too invested in my job.
David: Okay. And your strengths?
Michael: Well, my weaknesses are actually... strengths.
David: Oh. Yes. Very good.
Michael: Thank you.
David: Very good.

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My weakness right now is lack of experience.

That answer will hopefully change soon.

Honestly, I wish they would come up with an ANSI standard for "behavior questions." So the interview would go something like this:


HR: Hi Mr Idaho, as you may be aware, our company is incredibly lazy and our people lack any ability to have an actual conversation to determine you fit for this position and our culture. So what we are going to do is go down your prepared responses for the "ANSI 19265 Behavior Interview Assessment Survey."

Me: I understand. Honestly, I wouldn't expect anything else from a company that is sinking as fast as yours is. Here are my responses to questions 1-10. I would like to call your attention to question 8 or the "describe a time when you faced adversity" question. You will see that I managed to tie back into my responses for questions 3 (strenghts), 4 (weaknesses) and 7(learning something new) and provided foreshadowing for questions for question 10 (5 year goals).

Yeah, this is always a tough question to answer. The "workaholic/get too invested" answer is so cliche that you will lose quite a bit of your credibility.

For my first job, I basically said that my biggest weakness is a combination of my age and experience. I feel that I can handle a great deal of additional responsibility and I'm going to show that I can be successful at those high level things, but I am not always the most productive with small details. I referenced my DISC scores (Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness, and Compliance) where my Natural Style is D-100; I-94; S-10; and C-6. This indicates that I need to be in a constantly changing, hard driving environment that allows me to put out constant fires. If I am in high stress situations, I am not successful and my skillset is not properly utilized. I am not going to do well formatting reports/presentations, filing papers, or really any sort of meticulous, detail-oriented work. I would rather take on 15 projects at once and be constantly engaged vs. having to run a marathon run on one individual project. It's important that you pair me with someone w/ a strong Operational bent so that we can both be successful.

If I were later in my career, I think the Swinging for the Fences is a very interesting and reasonable response.

It's a question I generally ask. The answer, unless you say something ridiculous isn't terribly important. What I'm looking for is someone mature enough to admit they have areas they need to improve on (I.e. technical knowledge, presentation skills, quality of writing). There is nothing that fires off a red flag faster than a prospect two years out of college who lacks the self-awareness to be able to articulate things he would like to improve upon.

And yes, just about any seasoned hiring manager knows the canned/coached responses to this question and will politely ask you to drop the BS or mark down your credibility.

I have given a real weakness, example that in the past I found myself a little unorganized. Then give other examples how you have fixed it like keeping track of all deadlines and meetings on your computer and smart phone. If you are pressed for more info, it's not hard to make some people crack

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^
Those are some pretty lame responses. Are you you really suggesting that "I work too hard" is a good answer? Nobody would take you seriously.

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Chill out, my man. I wasn't suggesting that he literally say those exact words. It was a demonstration of how to say something that isn't REALLY that much of a weakness. Focusing on details that was said is a better example. I wasn't really trying to spend too much time coming up with a perfect canned response when I was just trying to get across an idea.

The point is you don't want to say something like "I'm lazy" or "I make mistakes because I don't check my work" even if they're true. You want to say things that the interviewer will forget or things that have easy/ready fixes

The answer to this question is always best told with a story of a situation where you had a weakness and what you did to improve it to meet your goal.

Never say you have one and leave it at that.

Say you can improve!!

Eyebrows and Jeff have it.

It is a question about self awareness and attitude. Answer truthfully but with a corrective action plan to counter the shortcoming or even a story with you overcoming the weakness.

Canned responses usually disinterest and annoy the hiring manager.

If I were to ask the question I'd follow up with "if you've improved it seems it is no longer a weakness"

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If I were to ask the question I'd follow up with "if you've improved it seems it is no longer a weakness"

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So the overwhelming consensus is that I should not answer with "My biggest weakness is that there's only one of me"?

Redheads.

I'd be fairly honest. If it was an industry I didn't have much experience in, I'd say that. If it was a technology that I was less familiar with than where I'm coming from, I'd say that. Obviously you wouldn't do that if your primary purpose is to be an expert at those things.

I'd also state that I had no concerns at all with my ability to learn by diving in and asking questions as needed and point out relevant times in the past where I've had to overcome similar issues.

They've seen your resume - they know what your background is. If you've been in the defense industry your entire career and are now switching over to handle something in the pharmaceutical industry, they know it.

These are human beings, not robots - if you give them some BS answer that sounds like it's out of some cheesy "how to dominate interviews" book, they're not going to be impressed, they're going to wonder how much else of your interview is complete fluff.

I've never met anyone that started a job and on day 1 had the culture, processes, industry nuances and technical requirements of the job all 100% clicking on all cylinders, but if they're smart and driven, they get there fast.



[This message has been edited by JDCAG (NOT Colin) (edited 2/27/2013 9:35p).]

quote:

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Honestly, I wish they would come up with an ANSI standard for "behavior questions." So the interview would go something like this:


HR: Hi Mr Idaho, as you may be aware, our company is incredibly lazy and our people lack any ability to have an actual conversation to determine you fit for this position and our culture. So what we are going to do is go down your prepared responses for the "ANSI 19265 Behavior Interview Assessment Survey."

Me: I understand. Honestly, I wouldn't expect anything else from a company that is sinking as fast as yours is. Here are my responses to questions 1-10. I would like to call your attention to question 8 or the "describe a time when you faced adversity" question. You will see that I managed to tie back into my responses for questions 3 (strenghts), 4 (weaknesses) and 7(learning something new) and provided foreshadowing for questions for question 10 (5 year goals).

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I've always heard that you never want to lead off your answer with "one of my weaknesses is..." as the interviewer may want to delve further into weakness #2, #3, etc; you'll spend the interview talking about your weaknesses vice strengths and accomplishments. When you talk about your weaknesses use "on rare occasions I.." I read this in one of the before-mentioned cheesy books, but it helped me.

I tend to think honesty is the best policy. I recently interviewed and talked about a really complex program I use and while I am good with the program there are still certain functions I would like to improve on.

I always answered with something similar to:

I don't know when to quit. Others moved on and I might still be trying to figure out <widget> I usually have to be told when to stop working a deal or trying to find a solution after the project is lost. On the otherhand no one will work more dilligently for you to complete a project and honestly a never quit attitude combined with a can-do attitued has always worked more as an advantage than a weakness.

Give them a weakness but downplay it. Don't sit there and dwell on it and don't rush it. I used one and said my weakness was the fact I like to talk a lot and I have been working on it lately. I said that to resolve this issue I just tell myself work comes first socialize after the job is done. I guess it worked because I am currently employed by one of the company's and received an offer from the other

Mine is always that I'm a perfectionist.

And i don't feel like typing out my entire explanation.

Such a BS question, but I typically go with something along the lines of:

I like to take on a lot of responsibility and new projects, which can sometimes be overwhelming. Over time, this has helped me become more organized and efficient blah blah blah (insert specific examples here)