How to answer the question; “What is your biggest weakness?”
Everybody kind of worries about this question. It’s the most stereotypical question that they have on the list of HR and interview questions. What you really need to think about is. How do I turn a weakness into a strength? How do I recognize my weakness or how do I turn a strength into a weakness?
Why do interviewers ask this?
When someone is asking you this question, it’s not about why they shouldn’t hire you. It’s about getting you to recognize your weak points in order for them to better coach you or to help you with that weakness. A stereotypical weakness from salespeople is that they have a harder time logging all their information or being detail oriented. So what you can do is say;
“You know, I understand that sometimes I am not the most meticulous note taker. In order to alleviate that I had been focusing on taking all the notes in the CRM and making sure that everyone else in my projects understands the project fully.”
As another example, let’s say one of your weaknesses is patience when working with a team. Reason being, you want everything to work out well, you want everything to run smoothly. Then sometimes when someone makes a mistake, it kinda feels like a prick in your side. And so what you can say there is:
“Sometimes I’m impatient with working with a team, but it’s because I want to make sure that the project is seen all the way through seamlessly. I want to make sure that the customer is happy and that nothing gets dropped along the way. So when I see repetitive mistakes, it starts to get under my skin a little bit. However, I’ve learned that I need to take the time to really focus on why something happened and. Work to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
What you should achieve in your answer:
The main focus here is whenever you’re answering “what is your greatest weakness” you want to choose a weakness that’s not going to end up making you look like you can’t succeed in the role. You want to be honest and choose a real weakness. Something that is actually true about your background, because again, they’re asking you in order to really help you in your career and help you be successful in the role.
Make sure to provide an example for how you have worked to improve the area of weakness or learned a new skill to combat the issue. Demonstrate self-awareness and the ability to see your actions from a third party’s view. Don’t look arrogant, don’t say I have no weakness. However, you also don’t want to say that you’ve got a million weaknesses.
Don’t overthink this question. It’s really just about getting a better look at. A realistic work environment with you in it. and learning how to coach and mentor you as an associate of their team.
