“What’s Your Weakness?” Answering Tough Interview Questions

“What’s your weakness?”

This is one of the most dreaded interview questions. Sure, you would love to tell the recruiting director your three strengths. You could go on and on about why you would be the perfect fit for the company or why you stand out from all of the other candidates. Of course, during this interview, you want to put your best foot forward and relish in all your positive attributes, so how do you handle a question that focuses on a glaring weakness?

Unfortunately, the majority of candidates are really weak at answering this question. Twenty-five percent of candidates bumble, stumble, and finally mumble that they don’t really have any weaknesses. Bad answer! If you don’t think you have any weaknesses, therein lies your weakness.

Another seventy percent of candidates give a bogus weakness. Job candidates think they are being clever, and they try to disguise a strength as a weakness: “Well, my weakness is that I’m a perfectionist” or “I work TOO hard.”  A recruiting director that has interviewed hundreds of candidates has heard these lines and isn’t likely to smile upon your cop-out answer.

That being said, there is a legitimate way to answer this question. First, actually state one of your weaknesses. Now, this shouldn’t be a red flag weakness like “I tend to get violent when I get frustrated” or “I’m not a morning person; I don’t think my brain actually gets going until about 11:00 a.m.”  Those weaknesses may be a tough sell to any employer.

The best thing that you can do is:

1.) State a weakness

2.) Explain why you felt it was important to correct

3.) Tell how you are working on improvement

The key is to state the weakness then focus attention on what you are doing to improve. For example,

“I’ve noticed that one of my weaknesses is that I tend to procrastinate. In the office, I know my procrastination not only effects me but the entire team, so I’ve taken strides to stop procrastinating. First, I recognized that I usually procrastinate when I seem overwhelmed by a project. To help with this, I now break down all of my big projects into smaller tasks that take no longer than two hours to complete. I also set personal deadlines for each of those tasks to be completed. Then I write a to-do list, so I know that every day I am taking strides towards the big, final project. I’m not perfect at the system yet, but it’s really helped me improve upon this weakness.”

Recruiting directors are more interested in how you handle this tough question and how you talk about it. It would have been a different story if you would have just said, “My weakness is procrastinating. I always wait until the last minute to do anything important.”  The key is to state the area for improvement then emphasize the ways that you’re taking positive strides to turn your weakness into a strength.

Courtney Pike is author of How to Say It on Your Resume, and she offers more career advice at JobBound.com