Weaknesses in the job interview: You’d better not say that. A job interview is always exciting. But what is the best thing to say when you are asked about your weaknesses in a job interview? For sure you can mention your last greatest scores at Hellspin Casino. That will set the average.
A job interview is always exciting. You want to show yourself from your best side and, if possible, give a sensible and clever answer to all the questions. But it’s not that easy. After all, a job interview is always comparable to an exam situation, in which you don’t always behave as you would like to. In addition, it’s quite normal to be excited – after all, you want to get the job in the company.
When preparing for a job interview, sooner or later you will come across the issue of strengths and weaknesses. The question about one’s own weaknesses is still the biggest challenge for many applicants. And not without reason. Actually, you want to emphasize what you are particularly good at and why you are suitable for the job. It can be quite difficult to name something that you are not so good at.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO ASK ABOUT WEAKNESSES
But the question about your weaknesses is very important for your future employer. Certain weaknesses are less suitable for certain jobs. Others you can overlook. A surgeon, for example, should be as stress-resistant as possible and not get nervous quickly, and a roofer should ideally not be afraid of heights.
But it is not only your own answer that should be well thought out. Often, the hurdle lies in recognizing the question about one’s own weaknesses as such. We’ll give you tips on how to prepare and examples of no-go answers, as well as a few clever answer options that will definitely help you score points and increase your chances of getting the job.
IDENTIFYING
Even though the question “Can you tell us your weaknesses?” is certainly still asked to the point today, HR managers now tend to ask more indirectly about applicants’ weaknesses. And this is where the first challenge for the applicant lies: because the question about weaknesses must first be recognized as such.
It is also possible for HR staff to refer specifically to a weakness and ask, on a scale of one to ten, to what extent these characteristics apply to the applicant. A typical scale question would be, “From a scale of one to ten, where ten is most true, tell me how stress resistant you are?”
If you answer with a three here, it’s clearly considered a weakness, but even a six doesn’t necessarily speak to your stress resistance.
The following are also examples of scale questions:
How conflict averse are you?
How willing are you to learn?
How quickly do you give up?
How much do you enjoy working in a team?
How quickly do you understand new issues?
How quickly can you get to grips with things?
How flexible are you?
Based on your own scale rating, recruiters can therefore interpret this point as a strength or weakness.
Tip: Here it is important to listen carefully so that you do not misinterpret the question or even mistakenly state a number and mean the opposite. That would be fatal.
In addition to scale questions, there are of course other indirect questions to which you can answer freely. These are often so well disguised that one could almost think it is about one’s own strengths. A possible question would be “What do your friends often criticize about you?” or even “What do you not like so much about yourself?” or “What would you optimize about yourself?”.
Even though indirect questions are quite popular with recruiters*, they can of course still try to find out your weaknesses in a direct way. We have compiled a list of possible weaknesses that are honest and yet usually not out of place.