That seemingly foolish, unnecessary interview question — what are your weaknesses — has to be answered well in most circumstances to receive a offer. Love it or hate it, it matters. Your answer, whatever it is, communicates a lot about you and your fit with a organizational culture.
Rachel Wells, founder and CEO of Rachel Wells Coaching, wrote about it at Forbes.com. She detailed specifically why hiring managers want to know your weaknesses.
“First, they're looking to assess your level of self-awareness,” she says. “If you respond with, ‘I don't know,’ or ‘Nothing,’ it demonstrates that you don't possess essential leadership qualities such as analysis and introspection, which are critical to your professional development and effectiveness as a manager.
“Being aware of your weaknesses, or your greatest weakness, as the question may require, indicates to hiring managers that you possess a growth mindset, which will likely extend to the teams you manage.
“It also demonstrates that you welcome and invite feedback, and use this to help you grow. Hiring managers ask this question to assess your fit within the organizational culture, particularly if their company values align with humility, honesty, and coachability,” Wells writes.
All that makes reasonable, logical sense. When you think about the question like this, it might seem more attractive to answer and less as annoying trickery and offensive. In fact, this question is important to ask and is a grand opportunity to shine when many other interviewees might not.
One of the first paths to success is knowing what not to do. So what are the ways not to answer, “What’s your greatest weakness?”
Wells shares more bad ideas.
"I am too kind."
"I work too hard."
"I'm a perfectionist."
“These answers provoke nothing more than a yawn, because they are overused, too generic, and actually do more harm than good since they do not provide specific details, thus failing to demonstrate self-awareness,” Wells writes.
Let’s be honest, no one wants to hear humble brags like the ones she just mentioned. All that answers like that will do are elicit eye rolls, a shaking of the head or a negative note, written down or stored away mentally, about your honesty.
The best approach, Wells says, “is to think about a challenge or area of improvement that you've overcome or addressed recently, ideally within your professional life, which is not a core requirement for the role.”
This makes a lot of sense, don’t you think? Wells addresses how to make this work.
“It could be that as you've been preparing for your next leadership role you've realized that you tend to get too hands-on with operations and struggle to delegate. … Simply telling the hiring manager what your weakness is does not demonstrate leadership qualities or management potential.
“You need to take it a step further and actually talk through what tangible steps you've taken to address these areas of improvement and turn them into strengths,” he writes.
By showing, with a truthful example, what the interviewer hopes to learn, you are increasing trust and candidate attractiveness to them, not decreasing it.
Here are some possible examples from Wells if you’re interested:
"One of my weaknesses is that I am very strong with operations and the team management aspect, but I am not as strong with the budget management and financial aspects, as I have had little exposure to this in my work to date. I understand this is an important skill that I need to develop, especially for this role, so I have already started working closely with my manager to ask for more exposure to the financial areas she covers including asking to sit in financial reporting meetings and liaising more frequently with our in-house accountant. I've also enrolled on a business finance course which is due to start next month."
"My greatest weakness is that I tend to be very hands-on as a leader, which often is a good thing because it was required with my last employer; but at the same time this leads me to decrease my own strategic productivity, because I get too involved and don't give the team room to be themselves and get things done on their own without my constant, direct input. Over the past couple months, I've started getting the help of a leadership coach to assist me with knowing how and when to let go and be more strategic, taking a birds eye approach to my department while being there on hand as needed."
"One weakness I'm seeking to improve is that my work tends to run into my personal life more than it should, and I struggle with maintaining balance. I've noticed how it has injuriously affected my health and overall wellbeing, and consequently I've made the commitment to set structures in place in my calendar to ensure this is minimized. For example, I have a separate work-from-home office, and I've been more rigorous with my scheduling, arranging my time and important meetings, and delegating more so that work does not unnecessarily run into my personal life."4
Shine brightly with this approach instead of feeling uneasy or annoyed with the question about your weakness or weaknesses. Win this question and you will win more interviews and job offers.