Interview Question: “What is your weakness? or What are your weaknesses?”
Candidate 1: “My biggest weakness is that I am a perfectionist. It makes me, sometimes, take more time to finish my work. But now I have learned to manage my work in a fashion that it takes lesser time, while being perfect all the time.”
Candidate 2: “My biggest weakness is that I like to do all the work myself. Now I have started delegating my work to others, but keep it under my supervision so that no mistakes happen.”
Candidate 3: “My biggest weakness is that I am extremely punctual, because of which I used to put deadline pressure on my colleagues. But now I have come to terms with the fact that every employee is different, and can’t be as fast and accurate for me.”
Can you observe the common thing in all the three answers to this interview question displayed above? I am sure you can – they all tell about a strength which has been disguised as a weakness. The base problem is same – candidates never try to understand the logic behind the questions asked. They fail to recognize the fact that the interviewer is not a fool. Recruiter understands and respects the fact the age old adage, “To err is to human.” Every human is composed of a certain set of traits, which is composed of both strengths and weaknesses. And it’s only due to this reason that training programs are organized in every organization. The reason to ask a question about a weakness are, primarily, three;
-to identify the areas of improvement and training that the new candidate would require
-to explore if the candidate does a self assessment or not; is he or she aware about the shortcomings?
-finally, to judge if the candidate has the strength to accept a weakness and criticism attached or if he or she is too proud to accept the fact that a weakness could be there in their characters.
The candidates, who lie make the task difficult for a recruiter to meet all the three goals. In most cases, such lies ensure an outright rejection. In other cases, where the recourse availability is scarce, it unnecessarily elongates the time and efforts involved in what was supposed to be a seamless process.
Don’t lie as there is no need to, unless your weaknesses include bitching about your colleagues and manager or getting drunk with a bunch of hippies, clicking a photo, and posting it on facebook every weekend or worse. For others, every organization offers training programs, and they are meant to bring a positive behavioral and technical advancements in the employees as per their individual needs and concerns.
So next time, when a recruiter asks this question, share an honest feedback.
Good Luck!
Vaibhav Gupta
Author – Job Winning Answers to 105 Trickiest Interview Questions