what do you say in interview about...

when they say tell us you weaknesses?

what do you say without shooting your self in the foot?

I would say Im a Workaholic and I spend too much time looking at Attention to detail.
Would that be a bad thing to say??
any one else got any Ideas on what to say to that question?

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Comments

jryantech

Well if you say being a Workaholic be ready for a follow up question like "Why do you think that is a weakness?" or "Do you really feel that is a weakness?"

The question is really easy if you say something but follow up on how you are going to make it better like this example:

Q: "Name one of your weaknesses"
A: "Well one of my weaknesses is that I am not as organized as I want to be, but I recently purchased a SmartPhone that will help with that a lot"

Hope this helps.

astorrs

Yup like jryantech said, turn a weakness into a positive.

His example shows that he's recognized a problem and is addressing it.

royal

Yep, agreed with the two posts above me. Always take a negative thing and turn it into a positive. And be prepared to show examples of why that's a weakness. For example, how you're disorganized and how you're using your smartphone to rectify it.

JDMurray

People usually cite things that are impossible to have as strengths, or that everybody has as weaknesses. Whatever you say, I recommend also stating a mitigating factor to the weakness. For example, this admission of a perceived weakness also contains a strength: "The field of network security is so vast that I never feel like I'm on top of everything, so I constantly need to study everything I can about it."

liven

+1

I think the question is designed to see if prospective employees can grow. It also shows if your realistic and able to realize that everyone has a weakness. Just like in evaluations... The boss has to give you things to work on even if he thinks you were perfect. No one is perfect. Just like the others stated, recognizing this means your willing to grow and can handle change/new situations....

That is just my 2 cents...

empc4000xl

dedication and h ow you learn to step away from it. Or when you know its time to ask for help and bring it in. Its best when you already have the answers to those problems.

hypnotoad

Tell them your biggest weekness is that you are a miserable phony HR drone whose main goal in life is playing golf and hitting on girls.

skrpune

hypnotoad wrote: »

Tell them your biggest weekness is that you are a miserable phony HR drone whose main goal in life is playing golf and hitting on girls.

That sounds like qualifications for a lot of management positions!

But seriously...I really hate these canned interview questions. "What's your biggest strength/weakness" is right up there with "where do you see yourself in five years?" They really don't tell you much about the person being interviewed, other than the fact that they did did a little research on google/monster/careerbuilder about what "proper" responses are to those standard questions.

HeroPsycho

skrpune wrote: »

That sounds like qualifications for a lot of management positions!

But seriously...I really hate these canned interview questions. "What's your biggest strength/weakness" is right up there with "where do you see yourself in five years?" They really don't tell you much about the person being interviewed, other than the fact that they did did a little research on google/monster/careerbuilder about what "proper" responses are to those standard questions.

Actually, idiotic questions like this often identify the idiots in your applicant pool. People sometimes say really stupid stuff when responding to these. Some people respond sarcastically, or show annoyance by being asked the question. You'd be surprised what questions like this tell employers about applicants, not by their answers, but how they answer the question beyond the words.

skrpune

HeroPsycho wrote: »

Actually, idiotic questions like this often identify the idiots in your applicant pool. People sometimes say really stupid stuff when responding to these. Some people respond sarcastically, or show annoyance by being asked the question. You'd be surprised what questions like this tell employers about applicants, not by their answers, but how they answer the question beyond the words.

Yeah, I guess you're right, but I just hate that interviewers don't get more creative with their questions. My favorite question I've ever asked of a candidate in an interview (for reception/marketing assistant position) was "What's your ideal work environment?" Turns out that was a good one to weed out the idiots, and I didn't even mean it to be. I asked it expecting answers like "creative environments that nurture teamwork" or "competitive environments that challenge you" or something along those lines...but instead I got some responses like "well, I like being outside because I like animals!" Um, what?

msteinhilber

skrpune wrote: »

That sounds like qualifications for a lot of management positions!

But seriously...I really hate these canned interview questions. "What's your biggest strength/weakness" is right up there with "where do you see yourself in five years?" They really don't tell you much about the person being interviewed, other than the fact that they did did a little research on google/monster/careerbuilder about what "proper" responses are to those standard questions.

I've sent away plenty of candidates with the strength/weakness question who have answered "I don't really have any" to the weakness question. I generally dislike many of these sorts of questions, but I can appreciate their use since they can weed out some candidates (however I would suspect if I hadn't asked some of my candidates that answered "none" to the weakness question they probably would have not made it to the next round just based off their other answers).

I really do love the strengths/weakness questions though if I'm conducting an interview and you get one of those oddball candidates that just makes you want to bash your head against the wall because normal people just don't respond that way. I've seriously had so many occasions where people put on their absolute best "used car salesman" show trying to pitch all of their wonderful strengths to me, some even trying to take control of the conversation and attempting to go on and on, then flopping with a "I have no weaknesses" to wrap it all up.

GT-Rob

Just please don't say you are a perfectionist, or you work to hard, or any of the other clearly BS responses. I say be honest, talk about something you truly would like to improve.

EdTheLad

DoubleD wrote: »

when they say tell us you weaknesses?

I'd say, sorry but the first rule my dojo master taught me was not to show weakness.

msteinhilber

GT-Rob wrote: »

Just please don't say you are a perfectionist, or you work to hard, or any of the other clearly BS responses. I say be honest, talk about something you truly would like to improve.

That's the key, I always point out a genuine weakness - not a weakness that can make you sound good like GT-Rob highlighted. Always point out your weakness, but then show how you are working or have worked to improve it.

My most recent interview I had this question pop up, and I was completely hones and I said that I sometimes run into problems keeping track of how my days are planned out. I followed up by stating that I have found a way to fully utilize Outlook so it works best for me and keeps my work PC, smartphone, notebook, and my home desktop updated with all of my tasks and appointments.

eMeS

These types of questions are pointless in interviews, but for some reason they persist. You either get the equivalent of a "dumped" response, or you catch someone totally flat-footed. Everyone expects an interview to be a time when they shine, not a time to discuss weaknesses.

I would propose not only turning the negative into a positive, as has been mentioned, but turning it up a notch by giving a clear behavioral example of how you made the weakness work for you.

This will serve the purpose of not only answering the question, but will also give you control of the interview, and put the interview more on a foot to discuss your actual experiences.

If you are interested in reading more about what I am saying, look up a book on "Behavioral Event Interviewing".

Also, I hope that if you made it to this question, you did pretty well in the interview. If this was early in the interview I would be very worried about working for that employer. It tells me they haven't really thought through the job enough to formulate appropriate questions to assess your fit for the job. If it was towards the end of the interview, then it might just have been the interviewer trying to fill any remaining time. Either way, I can't imagine that a hiring would hinge upon one's answer to that question.

MS

Mishra

I always response with a tech weakness instead of some "I'm disorganized" weakness to try and show true honesty. I make sure that weakness is outside of my job scope. I also follow the turn it around into a positive.

For example, in a system administrator role (without SQL), I will say that I'm not the best guy when working on databases however I do have a web server at home and I'm getting to know mysql quite a bit better.

zen master

JDMurray wrote: »

People usually cite things that are impossible to have as strengths, or that everybody has as weaknesses. Whatever you say, I recommend also stating a mitigating factor to the weakness. For example, this admission of a perceived weakness also contains a strength: "The field of network security is so vast that I never feel like I'm on top of everything, so I constantly need to study everything I can about it."

Great suggestion.

paintb4707

Kryptonite

Kidding kidding.

Everyone above nailed it perfectly. List something genuine and explain how you've improved on it. Not much else to it.