Interview

Jess18

Hi, Just looking for some advice. Interview tomorrow.

I'm expecting I'll be asked the question what are your strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are fine, but I want to be careful about how I put my weaknesses so that they come across positive.

My biggest weakness as I've been told by others is my confidence, however I have greatly improved on this in my work experience in the past year.
Do you think it would sound ok to say that confidence has been a weakness of mine in the past but through gaining more experience I have greatly improved on this? Any ideas? Or what other way could I put it? Or should I go with a different weakness?

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Jess18 wrote: »

Hi, Just looking for some advice. Interview tomorrow.

I'm expecting I'll be asked the question what are your strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are fine, but I want to be careful about how I put my weaknesses so that they come across positive.

My biggest weakness as I've been told by others is my confidence, however I have greatly improved on this in my work experience in the past year.
Do you think it would sound ok to say that confidence has been a weakness of mine in the past but through gaining more experience I have greatly improved on this? Any ideas? Or what other way could I put it? Or should I go with a different weakness?

Confidence sounds fine as long as

• Confidence is not a major part of the job i.e. you have not applied to RTE for a news reader's job
• You can demonstrate what you have done/are doing to improve the situation

Whatever you do don't go the "I work too hard", "I'm a perfectionist", strength as a weakness route. Any good interviewer will see this for the guff it is and it will not reflect well on you.

Wishbone Ash

Kelly Hissing Magenta wrote: »

Whatever you do don't go the "I work too hard", "I'm a perfectionist", strength as a weakness route

+1
It's nauseating to listen to!

allibastor

just say for a weakness that you have a bit to learn about the role, but that you are confident that with time and or training in the role you will over come this. any good interviewer will know that no one coming into a new job will be fully able to do it right off the bat, every job, even with the same job title and description will be different from company to company. just highlight that you have a lot to learn, but feel confident that you will overcome this in short time.

jimmurt

Jess18 wrote: »

Hi, Just looking for some advice. Interview tomorrow.

I'm expecting I'll be asked the question what are your strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are fine, but I want to be careful about how I put my weaknesses so that they come across positive.

My biggest weakness as I've been told by others is my confidence, however I have greatly improved on this in my work experience in the past year.
Do you think it would sound ok to say that confidence has been a weakness of mine in the past but through gaining more experience I have greatly improved on this? Any ideas? Or what other way could I put it? Or should I go with a different weakness?

Give one or two weknesses at most. Unless having great confidence is needed for the job, listing it shouldn't be an issue.

Always follow up with saying how you have worked on this wekaness in the past and say you are improving on it. Like you have in your post I suppose.

Everyone has weknesses.

Cheese Princess

I'm doing interviews at the moment and trying to rehearse possible questions.

It's always hard to find something to say when they ask about weaknesses. Obviously you need to mention something but also try and put a positive spin on it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I work in marketing.

Irish_Elect_Eng

Some years ago, while conducting interviews our HR person trotted out that good old reliable in each interview.

"Having considered the role on offer, what would your strengths and weaknesses be in relation to the role?"

We got lots on non-committal answers ( -1) and some smart-ass answers (-3), some used simple trainable weaknesses, (+1) some folks were quite honest (+3) but one answer stood out.

One candidate said with confidence something on the lines of:

"I have all the key strengths required to be successful at the role on offer..."

He then listed 3 key strengths and commented briefly on each outlining how they would enable success in the role.

"In terms of my weaknesses, I cannot think of any significant weaknesses in my character or skill-set that would prevent me from being an asset to the company in this role."

Pause...

"However I am not perfect and I can only guess at the challenges that I will face as I take on this role and integrate with the team. In the past when taking on new challenges I have worked closely with my manager to identify any areas for development in my performance and focused on improving my performance in those areas"

He then gave two examples of development opportunities that he had identified with previous managers and how he had addressed them successfully.

Our HR rep. almost fell in love with the candidate :-)

Note: How you answer, tone, confidence, delivery is very important on a question like this.

sligoface

Wow, impressed with the answer above, I could never tell someone I had no weaknesses with a straight face. I think most people are perfectly okay with hiring someone who was honest and admitted to having a weakness, as all humans do. As long as they're aware of it and want to work on it, and it's not not something that is obviously going to impact really negatively on your ability to do the job, it should be okay. I think the worst is if you don't know what to say when asked.

I think it's good if, instead of making your weakness a general personal thing like 'I'm _____', you relate it to something specific to the job, and preface it with a strength. Like if it's marketing you could say something like 'I enjoyed coming up with creative ways to market our products, but I was so focused on coming up with new ideas that I didn't always take the time to research the results of the strategies I had already implemented, to see which were most effective in translating to sales.' And then say how you became aware of it and what you did about it, for example 'To remedy this, I gave our customers an online survey to find out how they preferred to hear about our upcoming sales/offers/events, etc.'

That's a bit wordy and could use some editing probably, but something that like that where even though you are talking about a weak point, what you're saying reveals that you have a good grasp of what's important in your professional field, and also serves to shift the conversation back to what's required for the role as opposed to your personal flaws.

I think most of us can agree, however, that we wish they would do away with this question altogether, it's really worn out and torturous for applicants, and at best it only gives the interviewer an idea of how well someone can successfully navigate an awkward situation where they're being forced to straddle the line between telling the truth and saying what someone wants to hear.

Cheese Princess

I doubt many people really tell the truth in answer to that question and maybe it is more of a test of how you handle awkward questions.

I sometimes find that I get very focused on a particular project and find it hard to take a broader strategic view, so I think I'll try to use that as a weakness but in a positive light it also shows focus and attention to detail :rolleyes:

Thanks for the advice!

Mr. Loverman

By the time you've gotten to the nonsense greatest weakness question, it is likely they have already decided if they want to hire you or not, so I wouldn't stress about the question too much.

As others have stated, just don't say anything nauseating like "I'm too sexy" and don't say anything totally off-putting like "I have a weakness for kids in leotards". Play it safe by mentioning a normal human weakness.