Job Interviews: Answering "What's Your Greatest Weakness?"

Many interview guides advise candidates to answer the common "What's your greatest weakness?" question with a positive trait disguised as a weakness. For example, "I tend to expect others to work as hard as I do," or "I'm a perfectionist."

That would be a mistake.

Why? Because interviewers have heard these canned answers over and over again.

Job Interviews: Answering "What's Your Greatest Weakness?"

If you use one of them, it will likely backfire on you. Because the hiring manager will think:

So state a true weakness! No one is perfect, so don't try to convince anyone (especially yourself) that you don't have any weaknesses.

However, I cannot overemphasize the importance of not listing a key element of the position as a weakness! If you do that, you might as well send yourself the rejection letter.

Pick a neutral weakness about something that's not critical to the job. Mention that. Then emphasize what you've done to overcome the weakness.

This shows that you are honest, that you recognize areas in which you need to grow, and that you are actively seeking ways to improve yourself.

Sample Answers:

"I honestly can't think of any weakness that would prevent me from doing an outstanding job for you in THIS position. But in the past, I've had some trouble delegating duties to others. I felt I could do things better and faster myself. This sometimes backfired because I'd end up with more than I could handle and the quality of my work would suffer. But I've taken courses in time management and effective delegation, and I've managed to overcome this weakness." [NOTE: You would not want to use this example for a supervisory position]

"I honestly can't think of any weakness that would prevent me from doing an outstanding job for you in THIS position. But I'm very weak in math and have to rely on a calculator even for basic computations. I always have one with me just in case a calculation is needed." [NOTE: You would not want to use this example for an accounting position or one that requires math skills!]

This question really isn't so tricky, once you know what to expect and how to respond.

Job Interviews: Answering "What's Your Greatest Weakness?"
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Bonnie Lowe is author of the popular Job Interview Success System and free information-packed ezine, "Career-Life Times." Find those and other powerful career-building resources and tips at her website: http://www.Best-Interview-Strategies.com

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Competency Interview - How to Succeed at Competency Based Interviews

With competency interviews becoming increasingly common among interviewers across the world, it's a good idea to be prepared for when you have yours.

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In this article, you'll find out:
What competency interviews are What interviewers look for How you can prepare Where to go for typical competency questions

After this, you'll quickly start to feel more confident, be able to deliver a great competency interview performance and land the job!

Competency Interview - How to Succeed at Competency Based Interviews

Competency Interviews - What Are They?

Competency interviews are designed to find out how well you performed in given situations in the past. Research shows that how you did perform in the past is a more accurate predictor of how you will perform in the future compared to asking you how you would perform.

Here's an example:
Rather than asking: "How would you cope if you were given too much work to do" , interviewers might ask you: "Tell me about the last time you had too much work to do in a day". You see your interviewers want to know what you did in that scenario, why you did it and what the result was.

Before the interview, the recruiters study the job description and pick out the key skills, attributes etc.. that they think a successful candidate needs. They simply draft interview questions designed to find out if you are have these skills and attributes. The evidence is in what you did in the past.

Here's what we mean: Suppose the job calls for a person who can deal with difficult customers, in a complaints department, let's say. The interviewers will devise questions designed to find out how well you dealt with difficult customers before. The sort of things they will want to know are how you felt, what decisions/actions you took and the outcome of those actions. Some might even want to know what you would change about what you did.

What Do Interviewers Want In Competency Interview Answers?

On the whole, interviewers look for positive indicators that you are competent at the things they consider important in the job. But they also look for negative factors which will reduce the effectiveness of your answer. Negative indicators include not asking for help when appropriate, seeing changes or challenges as obstacles and reacting to things personally.

To fully understand how you behaved before, interviewers often want answers to the following 4 key components, often called STAR.

Situation or Task
Did the candidate explain the task or situation that they were involved in?

Action
Did they explain what they did, exactly, in relation to the task or situation?

Result
Did they explain the results of their actions?

If your answers don't give enough information, some interviewers will follow up with additional questions, like:
What was your particular role in this? What obstacles did you overcome? Why exactly did you take that action? What made you reach that decision? How did you feel about that? Who came up with that idea? What precisely was the outcome/result? What feedback did you get? How would you behave differently if it happened again?
Competency Interviews - How To Prepare

To help you get ready for competency based interviews, here are 5 things you should do:
Review the job ad Note down the knowledge, skills and attributes the employer is looking for. Are they looking for a good communicator, someone with initiative, or someone with excellent customer service skills and so on Come up with at least 1 example of where you've demonstrated each of the things you noted down in step 2 Write about the example/s in step 3. For every one, describe the circumstances, how you were feeling, what action your took, why you took it and the results Read your notes back to yourself or someone else. Think of extra questions your interviewers might ask about each example. Very often your interviewers want to know more than you expect!

Competency Interview - How to Succeed at Competency Based Interviews

Here are some example competency interview questions.

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