What Is Your Weakness | Best Answer (from former CEO) - The Recruiter's Perspective on this Question

The question I'm going to answer today is the job interview question, what is your weakness? And this is another one of those token questions that you're going to get asked in some way, shape or form at every job interview. They're going to ask you some permutation of this question. They're going to say, they're going to clear their throat first. And they're going to say, what is your weakness? Or what's something that you're working on about yourself? You see what I did there? I'm asking the same question, but I'm using different words to phrase it, right? So it's kind of a stealthy type thing. Basically, they're going to ask you to reveal something that you do that's not great, that you realize is not great, or you think is not great. And they are going to give themselves a proverbial pat on the back, or pat on the shoulder, as the case may be, if you can reach your back. Don't believe any of the rumors that I'm overweight, because I'm not. But they are going to ask you this question, and you're going to basically deliver to them on a plate a reason not to hire you, okay? This is their subtle game here. And so we're going to talk about that question. They are probing you for your faults, your flaws, okay? One of their purposes in a job interview is to try and get the dirt on you, okay? Recruiters get very antsy when I say that, but it's absolutely true. And I know this because I've taught recruiters in university. And this is one of the things they have to do. They don't just accept your sales pitch that you're the greatest person who ever lived and is absolutely flawless. They know that that's not 100% true. There's stuff that you're not saying. You're not saying all the bad things about you are things that might look bad. So their job is to try and peel away the layers and get the true story of who you are, right? See if you're a high-risk employee or not. And by high-risk, it means someone who's likely not to work out. So examples would be, are you the type of person, have you quit your previous 10 jobs in a row? You've worked there for three months, and then you've quit, right? Well, that makes you a high-risk employee in their eyes. If they hire you, it's likely that you will quit this job also. You have a track record of that behavior. And one of the principles that they use is past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Now, we all know that this is not necessarily true universally, right? People can learn, people can change. Some things don't work out and some things do, right? We all know this, but not in the eyes of a recruiter. They're trained to think very pessimistically about these things. If there's a blemish in your past history, that's what they will see. They'll just assume that that's who you are, that blemish, that flaw, that bad incident, and they will paint you with that brush and probably not hire you because of it, right? So your job in the job interview is to try and hide all of the bad stuff and only show the good stuff. That's because it's a sales pitch. Let's be honest, everybody who's not in sales just cringed right a second ago when I said that and probably turned off their live stream of me, but it's true. You're making a pitch for yourself. You're saying, of all the different people that you've talked to for this job, you should forget them and you should hire me. And here's why, right? That's what you're there to do at a job interview. So obviously, you want to downplay all your flaws, right? And what they're trying to do is they're asking this question, what is your weakness? To try and get you to simply reveal all your flaws. Now, I get comments on this channel, people saying, you know, I don't like all this BS. I don't like all this, you know, wordplay crap. I'm just an honest person. So when they ask you, what is your weakness? You would say something like, well, the first thing you need to know about me is I'm a raging alcoholic who hates everybody, okay? And oh, and I'm not a morning person. So I'm usually late and, you know, you need to know this because if you do talk to me in the morning or worse, tell me to do something in the morning, I will bite your head off. I will be an absolute misery to work with, okay? I think it's only fair that you should know this because we're going to be working together for a very long time, right? Now, if you're the type of person that would say something like that, obviously, the response from the recruiter is to say, well, thank you very much. I appreciate your candor. You know, it's great to see someone that just shoots from the hip and, you know, doesn't play all these games and just gives it to me straight. You know, I appreciate that. I now know who I'm dealing with and then they never call you back, right? So that's the flaw here, okay? Don't get me wrong. It's great to be honest and you should be honest, but in this situation, you're making a sales pitch for yourself, okay? You are also making a first impression. And if, you know, I mean, how would you react when someone walks in the room and you're just meeting them for the very first time? You don't know who they are. And the first thing that comes out of their mouth is, I hate this. I hate that. I don't do this. I don't do that. So don't try and get me to do that. Oh, and I had this bad incident in my past where I lost my temper at work and I threw a couple of books in the office and I stormed out and they fired me over that. I think it's only fair you should know that. What would your opinion be of that person if that's all you had to go on, right? It would be pretty bad, right? Would you hire that person? Probably not. Especially if the other nine people that you interviewed didn't say anything like that. They didn't say anything bad about themselves. You don't know anything bad about them. Would you hire that 10th person? Of course not. Right? This is how human beings react, right? So this is what's going on in the job interview. So they know you're going to put on some kind of a too-good-to-be-true facade and they're trying to break through it, okay? So the question becomes, if we get asked this and we can't be brutally honest, what should we do? Well, the next thing people do is they give these kiss-off answers that are so transparent. They say like, I have no weaknesses. Or they try and make a joke out of it and they say, oh, you know, my weakness is chocolate, right? Unlike me, my weakness is not chocolate. I've never had a chocolate bar in my life and any rumors you hear are all false as opposed to all the rumors you've heard about jail, which are all true. Now, so you can give a kiss-off answer. People that say, you know, when they get asked, what's your weakness and they say kryptonite and they honestly think that the recruiter has not heard that before. You know, here's a person whose job, nine to five, is to listen to people give answers in interviews and they ask this question in every interview. You seriously think they haven't heard that before? Don't do that, okay? It might be your first job interview, but it's their 5,000th interview. Unless you get a 21-year-old recruiter that this is their first job out of college or in their life and they have no clue what they're doing. That isn't an improvement, okay? But either way, don't say it, okay? So you can't give a kiss-off answer. You can't say you have no weaknesses. You have to give them something, right? So the question is, what can we say about ourselves? Well, here's the deal. You want to give something that's legitimate or it comes across as legitimate, right? But doesn't eliminate you, okay? So the way to do that is to give them something that's understandable, right? So what I recommend, and this doesn't come from me originally. This comes from a high-level executive recruiter that I worked with many years ago. And the recommendation I have is, here's what you do. You give a understandable side effect of doing something good, okay? So what you're giving them is not, you're not giving them the answer, I have no weakness. And you're not giving them a strength as a weakness. Because once again, they've seen that a thousand times before. They can recognize that, okay? You don't say, you know, my greatest weakness is I care too much, or I work too hard, or I'm just too nice, right? Because once again, that's a non-answer. At least it'll be perceived as a non-answer. It could be true. It could be totally true. And if it is, congratulations. But they will perceive that as a non-answer. So you give an understandable side effect of something you do that's good. Like, for example, what are some trade-offs that you've encountered? Speed versus accuracy, right? You could do stuff fast, or you could do it well. It tends to go like this, right? You could do something well, but it takes a bit of time. You could do something fast, but it tends to not be great, right? That's a trade-off. What's another trade-off? You know, well, I'm a people person, but, you know, and everybody loves me, and I spend a lot of time socializing and building relationships. But when it comes to actually getting a lot of actual work done, I'm not the hardest worker in the office, right? That kind of thing. So there's another trade-off. I'm sure you could think about five of these if you put your mind to it and gave yourself a couple of minutes, right? So that paints an answer to this question. So whichever trade-off maybe best describes you, so you can say something somewhat accurate, right? But don't give them something like horrible and say like, oh, my weakness is, you know, I've got a really rotten temper. No, give them something that's an understandable weakness of something that you do that's awesome, okay? And then they got a legitimate answer, and it is a weakness, but they're not going to eliminate you for that because that's totally understandable, right? For example, what's my weakness? Well, I'm not the fastest worker, but I pride myself on, you know, the things that I submit, whatever I submit. Maybe I'm a doctor, and I submit reports, or I'm an engineer, or I submit designs, or, you know, I'm a marketing person, and I submit market research studies, you know, whatever. But the work that I submit, I pride it on the fact that it is the most accurate of any of my coworkers, right? I'm not the first one to be done, but I'm the one that gets the highest score, right? Or vice versa. I mean, I suppose if it was accurate, you could describe the opposite, right? You know, I'm not someone that takes, you know, four days to do something that could be done in an hour. I'm the one that does it in an hour, and that's how I work, and I stand by it because you get something that's 90% accurate in a tiny fraction of the time it would have taken somebody else to do it. That's me. That's what I can do for you. You want to see the work volume I can do for you that's all 90% accurate? You know, that's a lot of accomplishments in a very short amount of time. You know, whatever. You could spin it whichever way you want. So think of a trade-off, an understandable trade-off, okay? Whichever describes you, that would be something to say. And the icing on the cake is after you give this understandable side effect of something you do, you can then give a thing that you do that mitigates it, that fixes it, or makes sure that it's never an issue. So to round off my recommendation and give you an example, it'd be something like saying, what's your greatest weakness? Well, I'm not the fastest worker, but I do what's necessary to verify everything I submit. So when I submit it, you know it's done properly and I get the right answer, okay? Now, just to make sure that this extra time I spend never causes an issue, I found that if I talk to my boss when I'm given the original assignment, when I get the assignment to do this job and my boss says, I need you to do this, I always make sure I say, in order for me to do a good job with that, I will need this amount of time, this amount of time, this timeframe. Does that work for you? Would that be okay? And 90% of the time, the boss says, sure. So even though I take a little bit longer than maybe some people expect, it doesn't cause any issues because everyone knows it's going to take me that amount of time. I mean, I'm making this up off the top of my head, but you get the idea. So you say what you do to mitigate the weakness and that knocks it out of the park. That gives you a really high score. You said something legitimate, but it didn't eliminate you. And you even use the question as an opportunity to tell them this great thing that you do, that is yet another reason why you're a great employee and they should hire you, right? So that would be the way I would recommend you answer this question. That's the, what is the weakness question? What is your greatest weakness? I've done a couple of videos on this and there's even a video where I go through several examples, example answers. So if that's what you're looking for, check that out, just search the company's expert. What is your weakness? And you should find that.