The right and wrong ways to answer the ‘What are your weaknesses’ question in an interview

Whether you are mid career or just starting out, the process of job searching can be exciting, but at the same time, gruelling, unpredictable and frustrating, especially at the interview stage. Questions from interviewers are getting more complex and detail oriented, with specific emphasis on self awareness. And there is no better question that digs into self awareness than the “what are your weaknesses” question.

It comes in various forms. What do you need to work on? What are your challenges? Or any form of question that requires the candidate to be more self aware, authentic and transparent.

This question is so critical that it may be the step between you and a good job with a good paycheque. Unfortunately, many interviewees believe this question is “stupid,” “lazy” and just not worth their time answering. They believe it is a set-up to throw them off and become uncomfortable. Worse, many interviewees become either complacent to the question or try to manipulate the answer by expressing a weakness that may look like a strength to the interviewer.

Either way, how someone answers this question says a lot about them – enough to decide whether to hire them. Self awareness, authenticity and transparency, once seen as nice to haves, are now on the must-have list for interviewers. In fact, many employee engagement and satisfaction surveys rate authenticity as one of, if not the top, attribute they would like to see from leaders and leadership teams.

Many emerging leaders think about moving up and getting bigger and better roles and paycheques. What they often don’t think about is where they may fall short. Improving on those areas is often more important than improving what is already working well for them. Improving those areas comes from introspection, asking yourself and others difficult questions and being brutally honest about what you need to work on. A few things to keep in mind when asked to ‘open the kimono’:

1. State the weakness openly and honestly. Make sure it reflects self awareness, with a genuine interest in addressing it. Don’t deploy the age-old advice to state a weakness that is really a positive, such as “I work too much sometimes” or “I want take on everything someone gives me.” All this will do is tell the interviewer that you don’t really care about the question, nor about any behaviours you need to work on.
2. Are you working to overcome or manage the weakness? Is it a bad habit you need to turn around or a value you have. Being diligent is something you are. As a result, it can be difficult for others to work with you, so you work to manage this by, for example, giving yourself only revisions to, not rewriting, someone’s work. The same goes for a weakness you are trying to overcome, like a bad habit. For example, you feel a weakness is that you are disorganized for team meetings. The way you are working to becoming more organized is by carving out 15 minutes before each team meeting to familiarize yourself with the material. In other words, you are seeking to be better organized with a few simple tools in place.
3. Identify competencies when you are explaining a weakness, ideally ones that are being asked for in the job. Whether that be motivating others, agility or depth of analysis – make sure you are being clear on how this weakness is affecting your work and why it is important to address. For example, if you need to work on your attention to detail, mention how this may affect how you implement strategy, and you are working to overcome this by running project plans though your colleague to make sure all information is complete.
4. Finally, mention what your stress triggers are and what you do to manage them. From poor communication to lack of support to simply people not following through on commitments, we all have weaknesses. They set us off and affect our performance. State what you do to calm it down and move forward.

The weakness question is not stupid, but the candidate may look that way if they minimize the importance or dismiss it all together. There is nothing other than strength in being real. This is authenticity at its strongest – addressing weakness is to embrace it.

Eileen Dooley is a talent and leadership development specialist, and a leadership coach, based in Calgary Alberta