 In this video, we're going to help you give a great answer to what are your weaknesses? A very typical interview question. When you are in an interview and the interviewer asks the what are your weaknesses question or a variation on this question it can be a horrible feeling. That feeling is much worse if you have not prepared at least one good answer. I remember when I was first asked this question in an interview quite a while ago now and my mind went blank for the first few seconds then it raced through a number of different possible answers. I gave a pretty lame answer in the end. It goes without saying you don't want to be in this position. The interviewer is asking you to reveal all your flaws. If you do then there is a good chance that your job application will not go further. Passing interviews is as much about ensuring the interviewer does not have any red flags or real concerns about you as it is providing answers that show off your great skills and experience. A couple of variations of this question are what areas are you most keen to develop or improve? What are the areas that you would like to improve? What is your greatest weakness? What are your key strengths and weaknesses? However it is asked this is a horrible interview question to have to answer. We're going to help you construct a couple of different answers to this question. We suggest having more than one answer to this question as I've had interviewers say well that was really interesting can you give me another example please so be prepared. Everyone goes into an interview determined to show off their best points and say nothing about their weaker areas. The job of the interviewer is to try and get a balanced view of you as a person and as a candidate for the role that they are advertising. Asking about your weaknesses can reveal a lot more than you think more than just what you say. Your body language when reacting to this question can say a lot about your confidence levels and how you might perform under pressure. Your answer will also tell the interviewer how much preparation you've put in before coming to interview and just in case you're tempted to wing it I would say that there is a pretty good chance that if you're going to turn up to interview without much preparation you're probably going to approach doing the job in the same way and finally you can of course talk yourself out of a job by giving a poor answer or revealing weaknesses in character skills and experience that mean you will find it harder than the next candidate to do the job you're applying for. A common way used to answer this question is to talk about the downsides of a current strength and how you have managed to overcome these downsides. Examples of these might include I'm very impatient and you go on to talk about how you have become that or I've been told I work too hard and you go on. I know that I care too much about doing a great job and if you're going for a junior position or the interviewer is not very experienced then these answers can work pretty well. They are certainly a lot better than talking about your real weaknesses. Here's an example I am very impatient I want to deliver results quickly and I get frustrated when other team members don't work at the pace that I do. In the past this frustration has resulted in upset team members I'm aware of this and when I feel impatient I take a few deep breaths and remind myself that everyone is not as action-oriented as me. I now try to support rather than chase and this works well. I get results without upsetting people. When you are applying for management level roles even the junior ones and certainly the senior ones this type of answer is no longer enough. This textbook type of answer can even become detrimental to your progression chances. One reason is more is expected of you and your answers and the other candidates are providing better answers. Another reason is that managers need to be self-aware to manage others well. Providing a textbook answer is not demonstrating self-awareness. Don't forget interviewers can do their research using google too so they know the textbook answers as well. So how might we answer this question as a manager? If the role being applied for is a junior manager you could talk about an area of experience that is not strong yet but you are working on improving it. Just remember you can't choose one of the key areas needed for the role. For instance sales people or marketers could talk about their financial knowledge and experience being less than they would want and the steps that they are taking to get basic financial knowledge or finance could talk about sales or marketing and what they're doing to improve their knowledge in this area. You are not expected to be good at everything. You are expected to know what you are good at and what you're okay at. If you have an area that you are really not good at we suggest you don't bring it up in answering this question. Choose an area that was a weaker area and talk about the steps you have taken to get it to okay in this area. As you get more senior talk about how you try to ensure that skills of team members are strong in the area that you or other team members are only okay at. This ensures that the team has all the skills and experience needed to deliver well as a team. Most middle to senior managers should recognize this situation provided you demonstrate awareness and progression to get your weaker areas to okay your answer will become a positive differentiator to other candidates using standard or textbook answers. Plus using this approach you are answering the question directly honestly and showing good self-awareness and productivity improving your skills. We suggest having two to three different weaknesses to discuss. We have seen interviewers accept the first answer and then ask for a second. I remember when I first got into sales I didn't like or know much about the financial implications of what I was selling outside of my targets and commission. As I climbed the ranks within sales I made a conscious effort to understand a P&L and balance sheet going out of my way to spend time with members of the finance team. It was a weak area that I'm now okay at. I am all over my sales numbers and my team's numbers and do numbers as a critical part of managing the sales process. I should ensure that I have a good and friendly finance person to lean on for those difficult bits of financial analysis though I am comfortable with information contained in most P&L reports. Improving my financial knowledge has really helped my sales team management too so it's been a great journey for me. I've risen through the ranks to middle management through being very good at my job and good at managing my team. We've delivered some outstanding projects which made a real impact on the division and the business. That said I had little experience at networking and was not as good at some at marketing myself within the business to the more senior managers and board members. I also had little practice networking externally to the business. For the business this meant important project didn't get quite as much buy-in within the senior management levels as they needed. Also as more of my role involved dealing with external parties my small contact list gave me and the business less options to get help when needed. I put myself on a networking course and used a coach to improve my approach in both areas. I spent the last two years practicing all the skills I've developed. I'm now reasonable at networking and marketing what I've been doing to the wider teams within the business. I've been promoted again during this time as a result of the work I've done in this area. My projects get great buy-in and I have a much longer list of great partners to solve problems we struggle with internally and I'm still working on proving this area. Make sure you create your own answers based on your own experiences with a little thought and practice you can come up with some great and original answers to this tough interview question. If you want to get more great answers to difficult interview questions then take a look at our interview question bank by going to enhance.training and selecting resources. We have answers to over a hundred difficult interview questions and lastly please hit the like button below if you found this video useful as this really helps us produce more great content for you and if you like the content of our channel and want more then please subscribe using the button below and hit the bell to get notifications when each new video comes out. Thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.