Here’s a question that everyone dreads at interview, and even wonders why it is being asked. It seems so negative – encouraging you to do the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in an interview, which is to say positive things about yourself.
So, how do you answer this negative question? What tactics should you use?
Well, to be honest, it’s not just a case of tackling this question at interview – it’s actually a useful question to ask yourself anyway: It’s all about self-awareness.
What are you not good at and, more importantly, how are you dealing with it? With any ‘negative’ behaviour that impacts your ability to do your work or manage yourself effectively, you need to have the awareness first of what your weaknesses are, so that you can combat them with conscious positive behaviour.
Self-awareness is something we are not always aware of! Sometimes we need to think hard to try to discover ourselves. In fact, other people – close friends, family and colleagues – may know us better than we know ourselves.
So, do you know what your greatest weakness is/weaknesses are? If not, try these exercises:
Answer the question – what’s your greatest strength? This is easier to identify – what are you good at?
For example, for me, it’s having lots of creative ideas. Sometimes, I feel as if I have a volcano in the top of my head that keeps on exploding with a colourful and creative lava of ideas. It’s fun and can give rise to amazing results.
However, the downside to this idea tsunami is that I can get overwhelmed with all the opportunities and possibilities that I think up, so that when it comes to making a decision, I can’t decide which one to choose. This means, I tend to procrastinate and can come across to others as being indecisive.
That’s my weakness – procrastination.
Consider what habits you have that annoy you personally. You may not admit them to others, but you know you have them.
For example, it annoys me that I’m not very good at detail. I like the big picture, looking for patterns and connections, but this means I struggle with detail, so that I may have to go over something a few times before I get to the specifics. I’m also not very good with lists, protocols and recipes, missing important items out by accident (which was why I decided lab work wasn’t for me!). It also means I hate doing my tax accounts at the end of each year and poring over all the details.
That’s my weakness – I’m not great at detail.
So, these are my answers to the question “What’s your greatest weakness?” Can you use these techniques to identify yours too?
Once you’ve identified and demonstrated examples of your weakness/self-awareness, that’s just the first part of your answer. Next, you have to show how you’ve overcome your weakness – that’s called personal self-development.
For me, to combat my procrastination, I set myself earlier deadlines or I team up with someone more pragmatic, who wants to work with an ‘ideas’ person, and will be happy to act as the time-keeper.
To offset my detail weakness, I put more time aside to do tasks that require me to deal with minutiae and I also keep my records as up to date as possible through the year (on a spreadsheet and in a Word document) so that, when the time comes, I have already done much of the work. [In terms of recipes, I have to admit I’ve given up making cakes, since missing out key ingredients such as eggs means they usually flop, quite literally!]
So, how do you offset your weaknesses? Yours might be to do with perfectionism, time-keeping, team-working, networking, making presentations, confrontation, speaking up at meetings, managing workload or any manner of things.
But before deciding on the weakness example to give at interview, I have one more piece of advice: Don’t choose something that is at the core of the role you’re applying for. For example, for me, a job where I need to make big and fast decisions or where I need to copy edit manuscripts.
It’s OK if your weakness is only a small part of your work, but if it’s at the heart of the job requirements, not only will you struggle to do the work (even with training), you probably won’t enjoy it and you’ll be outside of your comfort zone most of the time. Choose something peripheral and genuine, nothing too personal and show how you are aware of it and how you’ve developed ways to offset it.
Related blogs: How to be a STAR performer
Interviews: Prepare yourself
“Tell me about yourself”