How To Answer “What Is Your Greatest Weakness ?”

Many interview guides, advise candidates to answer the common “What is your greatest weakness?” question with a positive trait disguised as a weakness. For example, “I tend to expect others to work as hard as me” or “I am a perfectionist.” That would be a mistake. Why? Because interviewers have heard these canned answers over and over again.

If you use one of them probably have a negative effect on you. Because the human resources director will think: You are not being honest about your true weaknesses and are just regurgitating the advice of someone, you feel that others expect to work hard and strive for perfection (or what others covert positive features you use) are “weaknesses”, which makes you look ignorant, naive and / or lazy, you do not know how to make an honest assessment, or you are delusional and believes that it has no real weakness! Thus, a true state of weakness! Nobody is perfect, so do not try to convince anyone (Especially yourself) that you have no weaknesses. However, I can not overemphasize the importance of inclusion of a key element of the position of weakness! If you do, you might as well send us a letter of rejection.

Choose a weakness neutral about something that is not essential for the job. Talk about it. Then, to underline what has been done to overcome the weakness. This shows that you are honest, which recognizes the areas you need to grow, and that you are actively seeking ways to improve yourself. Sample answer: “Honestly I can not think of any weakness that prevents me from doing an exceptional job for you in this position. But in the past, I had some trouble delegating tasks to others. I felt I could do things better and faster myself. This is sometimes counterproductive because it would end more than they could handle and the quality of my work would suffer.

But I have taken courses in time management and effective delegation, and I managed to overcome this weakness. “NOTE: You do not want to use this example to a supervisory position “Honestly I can not think of any weakness that prevents me from doing an exceptional job for you in this position. But I am very weak in math and have to resort to a calculator, including basic calculations. Always I have one with me just in case a calculation that takes.