Saturday, May 17, 2008

What's your weakness ?

I've heard this question thrown at me several times during my career. If it were outside of career I can easily answer it.

Yesterday, I got into the same situation. I was asked about that one point that will make me stand out at work and also one point that would be my weakness. Did I stumble...not sure, but I was uncomfortable !

This question always bothers me. What is your experience? How would you answer this?

I remember the early days of my career when a few colleagues of mine had said 'Girls' as a response to this question !

4 comments:

Sumi said...

Great question to ponder ''Whats my strength and weakeness at work?'', the question can be extended to outside career too. At this point I am completely clueless! Looks like I will keep meditating on this question for the next couple of days. Unlike men, I can assure ''men'' aint a weakness for a vast majority of women!!!! Thanks for posting this wonderful question!

Unknown said...

ya... just for formality they ask this...

i too had that uncomfortable situation... but i gave a stupid answer....

being too perfect!!!

and explained that idiot that i expect things to perfect even if they don't need that much.

he didn't replied anything!!!

Jo said...

In most of the interviews, it is always one strength that is portrayed as a weakness to impress the interviewer. For example, "I tend to do everything I do with perfection and sometimes it can be mistaken for lagging the work. But I believe it is the quality of the end product that matters" etc. :-) It is mostly something we tactically answer. We know this, our employers know this and I still don't have a clue why in the hell they keep doing this as a process. :-))

Kishan said...

I find the whole system of HR interviewing people and asking such stupid questions for which you will never, ever are going to get the honest answers, meaningless.

Well, I was asked the same sort of questions during my first interview (when I was 20) and I don't exactly remember how I responded.

However,I do remember attending some stupid course where they were training students on how to face interviews. He told us that we should twist our positives as negatives when we are asked about our weaknesses. Like, "I am workaholic and I can never leave a problem unfinished even if it means I have to skip my dinner and sleep" or something to that effect.

If somebody asks me that question today , I would probably smile and ask him in return "Do you think anybody would ever answer that honestly?"