Tell Us About Your Weaknesses

Interviews will always consist of multiple questions targeted to understand a candidate’s personality.

Knowing about a candidate’s Weaknesses is one of the major criteria here. But this question can definitely put us in uncomfortable situation and give rise to few queries like:

- Why does the recruiter want to know about my weakness after all?

- How much in depth should I go about my negative points?

- Which weakness can be harmless to share?

- I don’t know about my weaknesses. Can’t I say I don’t have any?

Let’s look at answering these 4 Questions here:

1. Why does Recruiter ask this Question?

Parameters tested by the answer would be:

- Self-Reflection: How comfortable is the candidate in his own skin? Is he/she able to share about the weaker aspects also with ownership and confidence?

- Fitment: Can the weakness cause any harm to the organisation or the role requirement itself? Or it is something that can be worked upon?

2. What should be the depth of the answer?

We do not want the recruiter to retain this one answer for longer duration.

Be as crisp as possible and avoid using negative connotations.

Let’s take an example:

Answer 1: I sometimes tend to have a negative attitude towards my work which is why I miss on looking towards my achievements and always strive to improve more and more. I keep on finding my own mistakes with every task and always tend to set higher targets for next time which sometimes leads to performance pressure and ultimately affects the result in long run.

Answer 2: I believe I am my own biggest critic. I often tend to overlook my achievements and always focus on getting better. But I am learning in small doses though that self-appreciation is important. So I have started with an everyday practice of recalling and noting down all the good things done throughout the day before going to bed.

Definitely, 2nd answer is a better way to express the same point. It also talks about how are you working towards improving on the same.

Make sure to end this answer on a positive note.

3. Which are the SAFE Weaknesses?

Your weaknesses should not be directly clashing with the role requirements.

For eg: a candidate applying for a sales profile shouldn’t mention building rapport with others in an issue.

Some examples of SAFE Weaknesses could be

- Public Speaking

- Organisation Skills

- Writing Skills

- Delegating Tasks and Sharing Responsibilities

- Being too straight-forward with words

- Impatience

Never lie. Have your own customised list of weaknesses.

4. What if I don’t know about my weakness?

Denial would be the worst answer to this question. If introspection doesn’t help you find the answer, try the below techniques:

- Ask your family, close friends, siblings etc. whom you think knows you well enough

- Think about your failures and analyse why those happened.

Want to know about some more Interview FAQS??

Check the post on "Tell Me Something About Yourself"

Check the post on "Tell Us About Your Strengths"