Secrets to Answering Job Interview Questions About Your Weaknesses

As you sit in the interview chair, your best business suit and your leather shoes that are shined to perfection will not help you be prepared for the job weakness interview question. You are sure to get the, oh so dreaded weakness question and anyone that could ever hope to be successful in an interview should be prepared to answer it.

The Awareness Test

Many interviewers use this question so that the person they are interviewing gets put on the spot and has trouble finding an answer. The timing is important as they will be asking you questions about your extracurricular activities and suddenly the question about your greatest weaknesses is presented for you to answer.

The interviewer is using this question to gather information about how much awareness you have of your surroundings and how you pick up and move forward even when you are being asked some fairly stressful questions. If your answer to the question is very appropriate for the position then you may have just moved past some of the more qualified applicants that have a better education or experience background.

Exhausted Approach

So what is the best way to answer the weakness question? Well, you should defiantly go in another direction if you have thought about the most conventional approach that says you should take a weakness and twist the words so that it becomes a very valuable strength. As an example, if you were to tell the interviewer that your greatest weakness is that you are a perfectionist, they are likely to assume take this as a sign that you will not be very effective in delegating out responsibilities.

This approach has been played out all too often and the interviewers tend to see it as being shallow. IN essence, any weakness is just that, a weakness no matter how you try to spin it.

It is also not recommended that you make mention of a weakness that does not apply to the position that you are currently interviewing for. If you are interviewing for a position as a computer programmer and you answer the weakness question stating that you are too reliant on the spell check on your computer, the interviewer will surely see that you are really not the person for the job that they have open.

It is never a good idea to present yourself as arrogant by stating that you have no weaknesses at all. Being confident is important but if you are egotistical the interviewers will surely be turned off, especially if the position you are applying for is for a junior role. Everyone knows that there is no person alive that has no weaknesses at all.

Tested and Tried Tips

We have covered many of the answers to the weakness question that are simply no good so now it is time to get to the answers that do work. It is important that these tips will help no matter what the position a person is applying for.

You should start by doing some research about the company and the job that you are applying for and find out what their corporate culture is. This will give you the insight needed to form your answer in a way that will be fitting for the company. An example would be if you found out that the prospective position is with a company that is very democratic in their processes. You could then say that your weakness is that you had a challenging time adjusting to the management hierarchy in your previous management position.

You should also have an answer in mind about what your weakness would be prior to getting into the interview setting. You should have a certain weakness in mind that you have figured out how to spin into something that the interviewer will consider to be strength in the job that you are applying for. Your ultimate goal in the answer that you give is to show that you have grown past the weakness and are improving yourself. The interviewer will be able to see your go getter attitude and will surely be impressed by it.

Another approach is to mix your story with some humor. You should remember that the interviewer is also human and they probably enjoy a well told story as much as you do. You must be sure to keep the story relative to the job that you are seeking, though, and if you are successful you will surely move to the top of the list of applicants.

Another great tip is to be honest and to answer the questions honestly. People that administer interviews are experienced in reading a person to see if they are making up the weakness off of the top of their heads or if they are sincere. This will also help you when you are asked to give more detail about the answer and you will not find yourself backed into a corner.

You should also keep your answers simple and to the point. If you elaborate too much you may find that you are being asked questions about your weakness that you are not fully prepared to give an answer to. You should come up with just one or two weaknesses that you have worked to overcome in the past and give very brief answers about them.

The last, and probably most important, is to relax. Each and every interviewer will expect that the person they ask this question of will have a weakness. You have nothing to hide from them as they know up front that no one is perfect.

The job weaknesses interview question is a question that many people struggle with but you should be ready to give your answer and be prepared. If you have completed your research, written up your answer and then spent some time rehearsing it you will be on the road to impressing the interviewers for sure.

Johnny Berg is the editor of Prepareforjobinterview.com that provides valuable tips about preparing for job interview. Read more advice about Job Weaknesses Interview or sign up for a Free 10 Day Mini Course at http://prepareforjobinterview.com

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