Weaknesses?  What weaknesses?!

Let’s face it, we all have weaknesses.  We don’t live in a perfect world, and there is just no such thing as a perfect person.  It’s a cold fact of life. You may be thinking to yourself, “Don’t companies fault me for my weaknesses?”  The answer to this question is definitely a tricky one, as they do, yet they don’t.  Confused? So were we at first.  What it comes down to is that we all have individual strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are, and as professionals, we need to learn how to embrace them and play them to our advantage. 

So what do you do when you are plagued with the question, “Tell me about your weaknesses?”  Before you answer, it’s important to understand WHY you are being asked this question.  Employers are looking for three main things:

-          Are you aware of your weaknesses?

-          How does it impact your work and others around you?

-          What steps are you taking to improve upon them?

Another thing to note with this deceptive question is that you should never avoid answering the question.  Believe it or not, employers are extremely intrigued to hear your response and will be even more disappointed if you give a generic answer or worse, no sufficient answer at all rather than just admit to a weakness.  Sounds crazy, right?  It’s actually not.  An employer wants to know that you are aware of your imperfections and that you are in fact trying to learn from them and better yourself as a professional, hence our points above.  Personal development is a highly favorable characteristic in a successful candidate.

Now, don’t just dive off the deep end and disclose every single weakness (i.e. I “borrow” pens from the supply closet); that will get you into a whole heap of trouble and will most likely disqualify you as a candidate.  You must be clever and cunning with your responses and secretly discuss a strength in disguise as a weakness.  Here is an example of a weakness that shows awareness of it, displays the impact it has on the individual and others and how that candidate can work to improve upon it.

Awareness:  “I often times have a challenging time delegating work to my fellow peers and teammates and in result pile an excessive workload onto my plate.”

Impact: “I realize that not delegating to my team doesn’t benefit my colleagues as it is not challenging or motivating them to take on additional responsibility, nor does it allow them to learn or work on new projects.  It also can have a detrimental effect on my own personal time management, thus resulting in me to work long hours and potentially exhausting me.”

Improvement: “A priority of mine though, especially since I’d like to eventually get into a management type role, is to make a conscious effort to let my team support me in my work and have confidence that they will accomplish these tasks and hold themselves liable for performing at the highest level.  I will continue to hold myself to a high standard of work excellence and will try to impact as many projects as I can but will be sure to not only hold myself accountable, but also my peers accountable on future collaborative efforts.”

This response identifies a weakness for the interviewer and shows them how the candidate is looking to better themselves in the process.  The moral of this story is to stop seeing your weaknesses as a negative, rather simply acknowledge them, embrace them and learn from them. And remember, this is just one of many difficult questions that you will be faced with in an interview.  Are you fully equipped to answer them all?