Comments on: How to answer the weakness interview question

By: Seattle Interview Coach

Seattle Interview Coach — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:51:51 +0000

Excellent post on the weakness interview question! I wrote two blog posts on how to answer the biggest weakness interview question:

In this short post, I discuss the secret to answering the weakness question:
blog.seattleinterviewcoach.com/2009/01/how-to-answer-what-is-your-biggest.html

In this longer post, I analyze Barack Obama’s response to a variant of the common greatest weakness interview question, drawing inspiration from an interview between Katie Couric and Obama:
blog.seattleinterviewcoach.com/2009/01/ace-your-job-interview-questions-like.html

- Seattle Interview Coach

By: Scot Herrick

Scot Herrick — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:43:37 +0000

Barbara – I changed it just for you!

Even though I didn't write the post, getting the singular with the plurals right in a sentence is my toughest writing problem.

By: Barbara Mueller

Barbara Mueller — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:33:56 +0000

“None of us are perfect”? You got that right! “None” is the subject of that clause, so the verb should be singular: None of us is perfect.

Sorry. I'm an English major. We're good at catching arcane grammar errors … and flipping burgers. Occasionally, we're also useful for proofreading someone's resume!

By: Scot

Scot — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:47:03 +0000

@ Emily — Chocolate is a great answer! I get why hiring managers want to ask this question as it shows some level of analysis of your skills, but the manager should have a far greater need to understand your strengths.

People engage in a job more, do better work and expand their skills when a manager focuses on giving tasks to people that reflect their strengths. I had a manager once that noted you should make your strengths so overwhelming that they overcome any weakness you may have. I’d agree with that.

Working with your strengths is one of the things that can make work fun. Wouldn’t that be nice?

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:16:29 +0000

Whenever I am asked what my greatest weakness is, I always answer “chocolate.” That always gets a chuckle and then I explain that I have high expectations of myself and others and I have a hard time working with someone that doesn’t have high expectations or has a lesser view of quality, but that I have learned that we all have different backgrounds and I learn to work with their standards and try to be as specific about quality as I can (remove the subjectivity).

By: 5 Ways to Ace the "What's Your Weakness?" Question | Team Taskmaster | BNET

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:40:22 +0000

[...] about a past weakness you’ve corrected. Laurie Berenson, writing on Cube Rules, suggests telling a story: this had been a problem for you at work, you identified the problem, you [...]