What is your greatest weakness?

Ugh. Let’s be honest. We’ve all heard this question before. It’s the same old, overly used, most expected question you’ll ever encounter on a job interview. And it never fails, right? Somehow, someway the interviewer slides in this classic question and the candidate is suddenly a nervous wreck.

Believe me, you’re not alone.😥😣😥 

Although interviewers and recruiters may consider this a softball question, it can understandably be difficult to answer it as effectively and perfectly as all candidates wish to. You may find yourself researching how to flip a strength into a weakness or perhaps texting your friends on how the heck you’re supposed to answer what you may indeed consider a “trap” or “trick” question. Well, exit out of the search engine, stop bugging your friends and allow your expert career coach to let you in on the secret to answering this question. 

Top Secret Career Advice – Choose a Weakness You’ve Already CONQUERED

Seems pretty simple, right? Well, there’s a method to this madness. Carefully think on your past experiences and pinpoint a weakness you’ve already mastered. The key here is to discuss a weakness that impacted your work performance and the proactive actions you took to SOLVE said weakness. Did you seek training from an expert? Did you enroll in a particular course?

See below for a few examples of how to answer the greatest weakness question:

• “Speaking in front of an audience, especially on a raised platform, had always been a fear of mine. I can recall times when my palms became sweaty, I stuttered over my sentences and my heart raced impossibly fast. Recognizing this to be a stumbling block in my professional growth, I decided to take public speaking classes to triumph over this.

• “One of my biggest weaknesses is navigating my way around Microsoft Excel. I still consider myself a beginner level user, but I’ve improved greatly within the last few months due to several courses I enrolled in on Khan Academy. In addition to that, I registered for some online training sessions geared toward mastering Excel and I like to play around with it in my spare time.”

Boom! You see how incredibly easy that was? Instead of focusing on what you’re NOT good at, simply focus on what you’re doing or have already done to combat that particular area of weakness. Focus on how you transformed that negative into a positive. Not only are the above examples honest, transparent and very truthful answers, they’re answers the recruiter and interviewers will absolutely eat up.

Hopefully this gives you a bit more insight on how to successfully answer the dreaded weakness question. Now, to learn more about this, check out my e-book top interview question and answers. In this book I go over all the top questions that you are going to be asked at a job interview and HOW to answer them. Check it out here!