“What mistakes have you made since 9/11?” the press asked the President of the US. “What is your greatest weakness?” the interviewer asked Amy on The Apprentice, a TV reality show. Both had difficulty answering. Frequently in an interview situation the interviewer asks some variation of these two questions. What would your answer be?
How did each of them respond? The President knew he should have had an answer and said so. Amy just answered a different question and the interviewer told her she wasn’t answering his question. Neither one ever really answered the question.
If you are looking for a job, looking for funding for your business, or if you are campaigning for an elected office a variation of this question is bound to come up. It is a tricky one so you need to prepare for it.
No one likes to talk about mistakes or weaknesses. It is more comfortable to focus on successes especially if funding, an election or a job is at stake. The easiest answer would be to say that you have no weaknesses or that you have made no mistakes. You probably realize that this is not a good answer since it makes you sound arrogant. There isn’t anyone who hasn’t made a mistake or who doesn’t have a weakness.
It is no wonder that people are reluctant to talk about mistakes and weaknesses today. According to an article in the Boston Globe (4/18/04) Brian Tulgan, a workplace expert and chief executive of Rainmaker Thinking, Inc says his firm found that employers today are less tolerant of employee error, waste or inefficiency. He says employers must be ruthless to survive!
So what do you do when someone asks this type of question? In his book Knock ‘Em Dead -The Ultimate Job Seekers Handbook Martin Yate suggests that if you know there is a part of the job where you lack knowledge and it is something you can easily learn you could say “I haven’t worked with ____ before but I am sure I will pick it up quickly.”
I’ve used a strength as a weakness. For example I know I am persistent which is a strength but when I work on something challenging I never want to give up until I have succeeded. There have been times in my career when I should have moved on sooner. Some interviewers accept this answer but I have had one or two who just don’t understand how persistence could be anything but a strength. In those cases giving an example has helped with the explanation. The example could also be the answer for the “mistake” question.
Another way Martin Yate suggests answering the question is to design your answer so that your weakness becomes a positive characteristic in that particular job situation. For example: “I always give 110% to a job so when someone on the team doesn’t pull their weight I get frustrated. I am aware of that weakness and have learned to overcome it by keeping a positive attitude and trying new ways to energize the team.
Since the best learning (and the most painful) comes from making mistakes you might give an example of how you learned from a mistake or dealt with a weakness in the past. It is the learning that I think is important and then the follow up would be how you deal with your weakness now or how do you avoid making this mistake in the future.
Take Action:
1. Think about your answer these questions:
What is your greatest weakness?
What mistake have you made in the past?
2. What have you learned from your mistake(s)?
3. How do you deal with your weaknesses?
4. Current thinking is that you work from your strengths and delegate your weaknesses. Sometimes that is not possible. What do you do about your weaknesses then?
5. If you share your answers to #1-3 with me, I’ll make a list to help others with these questions.
Mistakes and Weaknesses - To learn more about this author, visit Alvah Parker's Website.
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