Interview Questions: “What are your major weaknesses?”

 

I don’t know anyone that enjoys answering interview questions, especially this one,  “What are your major weaknesses?” As mature workers we have had our entire career to address our shortcomings, so you have to be prepared to answer all interview questions. Preparation is the key to taking the fear out of this question. In my younger days, I had some flip answers for these painful questions. I would say things like, I tend to work too hard, so my weakness would look like a benefit to the hiring manager. If you haven’t interviewed in a long time, it will take some introspection to come up with a list that is credible and shows you to be responsible concerning your shortcomings. 

 

 

Many times we can recall painful reminders of when we were given some ”career counseling” for a problem we had at work. This is a good place to start. For example, when I was younger I transitioned from Sales into Marketing as a program manager. One of my skills as a salesman was that I read people very well, which when I was selling one-on-one, helped me to succeed. It became a problem when I went into marketing and I had to address groups of my peers to sell them on the benefits of a marketing program. I could read the body language of the audience members and the feedback would confuse me, some people were “buying into” the program and others were not. When I tried to respond, I would get confused and would stutter. My boss told me that my presentations were awful and could cost me my job. I got him to agree to let me go to Toastmasters on company time to work on my presentation skills. I learned in Toastmasters that I was not convinced that my marketing program was good for the company. It had fatal flaws and unconsciously I knew this, but had not acknowledged the problem. I was simply doing what I was hired to do. When I acknowledged that the program was structurally flawed, I didn’t have to over sell it to my colleagues and the stuttering stopped – and by the way I went from being the “Wizard of Ah’s” to “Speaker of the Year” at my local Toastmasters club.

 

This long answer is too long for an actual interview situation, so I might paraphrase it to something like this: “I have a natural gift of reading people which has helped and hurt me in my career. When I was a young salesman, I often got sales because of this natural ability. In mid career I went into marketing, and I “lost” my ability to speak to my peers. I joined Toastmasters where I learned that reading people in a large audience could confuse me and cause me to stutter. 

 

 

The Enneagram Social Type can also give you ammunition for answering these types of interview questions. For example, The Perfectionist (see my Blog on this Social Style) can become so obsessed with doing things the “right way” that they miss deadlines. Most employers love experienced workers that are perfectionists as long as the employee is timely with their work and willing to accept less than perfection. Another tool for the perfectionist is to delegate to another person whom they trust to do things correctly. Perfectionists tend to get angry over shoddy work and can be very critical of the performance of others. So, if you have this trait, you have a lot of material here to show that one of your strengths can also be a weakness and career development plan opportunity. Emphasize that you recognize your perfectionist tendencies and that you attempt to stay balanced and practice tolerance with people who have different social styles.

 

 

Let’s go back to the flip answer about working too hard that I used to give when I was younger. In this day and age of 60 to 80 hour work weeks it is hard for an employee to have a balanced life. As mature workers, we have learned this lesson. We know that we have to work hard and smart. It is no benefit to the company if we burn ourselves out. In the Enneagram Social Style index “the Six” is considered a “loyalist” or “Responsible” worker. The biggest fault with a six is they don’t have good boundaries. They control their world by working, working, and working. “Sixes” have this huge fear of failure and early in my career I was a flaming “Six.” I couldn’t even consider the thought of not succeeding. I had four children and a good job. There was no that way that I was going fail at my job without fighting to survive. Because of this scrapping attitude I was often the “point man” for new projects: an informal leader for new initiatives for my company.  The point is, my weakness became strength and I can use that to answer interview questions about my weaknesses.

 

 

The bottom line is that we need to reflect in advance and not become annoyed by someone trying to probe into our weaknesses. Hopefully, you have enough information from this article to do some introspection and create a list of weaknesses. For now that is all you need, just to create some awareness for yourself. Spend a week creating a list. If you kept your yearly work appraisals from your supervisors, you can review these to identify and acknowledge weaknesses. Next week, you can write a paragraph or two like I illustrated above in “ Fear of Failure”, for each of your weaknesses. Finally, if you have confronted your weakness and taken personal action to address the issue, you then have the all the material to create an effective and genuine response to the interviewers’ probing into your character. Even if you acknowledge the weakness, however, you may discover that you still have not taken action to correct the problem. Let’s say you still have fear of speaking to large groups.  Take action, join Toastmasters – and you will be able to demonstrate to the interviewer that yes, you are a responsible candidate for the open job position.