“What is your greatest weakness?!”

What is the “greatest” response that I have ever heard when it comes to the old favorite “what is your greatest weakness?”.  By “greatest”, one can take it as great for the candidate or great for the interviewer.  I’ll start with the greatest for me, as a hiring manager.  Silence  is a classic. Cracks me up every time.  The other one that I loved was how someone just spewed on and on, as if I were their therapist, about how many mistakes they make and how they never seem to be accepted by their new teams. The emotions went from, of course, feeling relieved that I can immediately end that interview to feeling downright bad for this person (at many many levels)..  But now, let’s get into what they really SHOULD be saying, and once, again, it boils down to following the simple golden rules of sales…..

I disagree with those who say being a perfectionist, for example, is a great weakness to use. IT ISN’T.. Having managed thousands of people, I pretty much learned to AVOID perfectionists at all costs. Besides costing my business precious time and money, they are also highly annoying! Many hiring managers feel that way, so don’t bring that one up.

Truly there can be no correct answer here!  The reason, is a theme that I often mention.. and that is that when someone is interviewing (and we teach this to recruiters when they learn the RIGHT way to prep/brief a candidate), EVERYTHING that they say NEEDS to be a REASON to be hired!! We all know in sales that we prospect/qualify and then pitch a prospect. Ok. the prospecting is done for them and they are on the interview. However, the “what is your greatness weakness” question is asking them to “PITCH” to the client. It is just, of course, another reason to be hired. As all sales people know, the pitch ALWAYS should come back to some benefit for the prospect. Ie What’s in it for them… or how does it answer/address one of their hot buttons that we learned during the “qualification” step. So, if the client/hiring manager, for example, only has, say one hot button. For example, their ONLY hot button is that they hate clock watchers and want someone who will always work until the job is done and not leave at 5pm, then their greatest weakness should be that they lose track of time.. That they are always so immersed in a project that the clock just flies by and before they know it, most of their team has left the building.. My point is that EACH “weakness” question ought to be fully geared towards addressing a specific hot button of that client.. If the candidate went through a recruiter, then they need to find this out.. ANY good recruiter will know that they MUST find this out and MUST prep them about this question and how to answer it. There is no such thing as a great answer that fits all.. Of course, I still do love “I make too many mistakes”.

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