Strengths and Weaknesses Interview Question

Posted On: October 11, 2015

If you are preparing for an interview, it’s time to think about how to answer the strengths and weaknesses interview question. Let’s take a look at a few strategies to answer this question.

Tips for talking about Strengths and Weaknesses – Interview Question Preparation

Tips for talking about strengths:

Choose strengths that match job description – tasks or outcomes
Choose 3 of the most relevant or important strengths
Tell a short story one strength or all three strengths in one story
Close with how this relates to the position under scrutiny

Take a look at these videos –
How to Answer Tough Interview Questions: What is one of your weaknesses? (from Capella Career Center)
How to Answer: What is Your Greatest Strength? (from SparkHire)
An overview on how to answer What is your biggest weaknesses? (from Dice)

Tips for talking about weaknesses:

Don’t take a strength and make it a weaknesses
Talk about a real weaknesses
Name something you want to improve, and how you are improving it
Don’t mention weaknesses that are major components of the job being hired for
Stick to tasks over personality traits

This is not a trick question with the right strategy to answer it, as discussed in this video.

Make a WAR on Weaknesses!
W – State the weakness / Pair it with a strength if possible
A – Action – what have you done to overcome it
R- Results – what result have you seen or do you plan to see after the change?

For more on how to take on this WAR in a positive way, using the sandwich approach, watch this video.

Many of us may struggle to identify our strenghts and weaknesses. Maybe we don’t think about them often. I suggest to track your own career progress somewhere as you are the best person who can talk about all of your experience. See this post on tracking your career progress for more information.

Jennifer Kumar works with offshore and onsite teams to prepare them for client facing interviews and job responsibilities in a global arena. Contact her to learn more about learning the leadership and communication skills for cross-cultural business success today.

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