Strength & Weakness Interview Questions & Answers

A genuine answer tends to sound more impressive than a generic one, as there are high chances the hiring manager or interviewer has heard some responses repeatedly. Stating how you are a perfectionist or punctual is likely to lose an interviewer's interest. To avoid this, express something you can genuinely abide by.   

An overly generic answer can sound too calculative and exaggerated. A boss or an interviewer does not wish to hire someone who can promise something they clearly cannot bring to the table later. Good employees can understand and leverage their skills and learn from their weaknesses. Demonstrating that you can self-reflect is necessary during the Strength and Weakness Interview questions.   

Any real-life or concrete example is a good idea in a Strength and Weakness Interview question. It helps people contextualize the response drastically better. As people interviewing you understand concepts and circumstances much better with a story, a narrative that supports your positive traits by providing an example and backing up your claims will always be helpful in such situations.   

Try to demonstrate how your strength helped you in achieving a task in a professional setting. Not only will sharing a simple example make your response stand out from others, but it will also make you and your answer sound much more honest and genuine. It will show traits the interviewers might be looking for, similarly have a narration about how you overcame your weakness to achieve an important task.    

While defining your traits, you should be able to tie them to skills necessary in the role and company you're applying for. An answer is not complete until it addresses the relevance of your response to the interviewer, tell the interviewer why the traits you claim to have will be a positive addition to his company and how It is relevant to the job you are applying for, having some insight in such situations can make your answers much more impressive.   

While stating your weakness, always try to demonstrate your growth and measures you have taken and are actively taking to overcome them. It helps the interviewer understand your approach to problem-solving and foresee your growth in a professional environment.  

For instance, let’s say you are a candidate with a fear of public speaking. Tell them how your priority was to tackle the issue and how you actively worked on it and later did a presentation beautifully. This will demonstrate that even if you have not mastered your weakness entirely, you still have a better hold than those who refuse to acknowledge it. 

Always remember that you have a limited time frame to answer all the interview questions. An interviewer needs to be able to get all answers from you to give a proper assessment. Thus by dedicating too much of your time to strength and weakness-based questions, you might need more time for later ones. Try to narrow down your response accordingly.   

Taking most of the interview time in responding to particular questions should be avoided at all costs. Quality responses over long-stretched answers that take half of the interview will always be favourable. 

Stressing over one poorly formed response is detrimental to all-over results; an interview is the result of points taken from the collective responses for all interview questions rather than just one. Even if you could not respond appropriately to the previous question, it should not reflect upon the later one. It is doubtful for a decision to be boiled down to a single response rather than all. Salvage what you can to the best of your abilities without worrying about where you fell short. 

There is a certain approach for candidates to take when going for job-based interviews, such factors to keep in mind can drastically boost your chances of being selected, some of these factors and strategies are as follows: 

A) Strength-based strategy   

Try to understand the interview from the hiring manager's perspective before you approach it. If you were the person hiring a candidate, consider which qualities you would be looking for in the said role. Be confident while defining your strength, and brag about it if necessary.   

Mention one or two of your top strengths that you are confident in and give an example of how you would utilize them in the respective workplace. Consider what set of your strengths aligns with the competency requirements of the job you are applying for. Your strengths should ideally be skills supported through experience. For instance, if you list patience as a strength, you should be able to narrate a situation where you utilized your patience to overcome a problem and achieve a goal.    

Keep in mind that your strengths should be reflective of the job you are applying for. It is necessary to frame your answer while keeping the job description in mind, be ready for such questions and have statements for such situations prepared that will help you entwine your strengths into the interview.   

B) Weakness-based strategy  

Everyone has flaws, but the ability to recognize them and work towards improving them can also be considered a form of strength. The key to answering such questions is to pair your weaknesses with self-awareness and countermeasures while talking about them. Your actual strengths or weaknesses matter less than how you talk about them. Telling an interviewer how you are aware of your flaws but have taken measures to improve them shows signs of responsible nature and will to take the initiative, which appears pleasant to interviewers.   

Your weakness can be relevant to the job you are applying for. It can easily be a skill outside the stated requirements. Still, it is necessary to address a shortcoming that may affect your performance in the future. Hence it may be a complex skill set in the job description followed by your desire to acquire this lacking skill. Similarly, listing a soft skill, you are missing currently should be mentioned with a plan to learn or improve upon your weakness.   

Lastly, while it is necessary, to be honest about your weakness, there are certain things you don't need to mention in a Strength and Weakness Interview, as they tend not to benefit you in any manner. Some of these can be a delay, lack of precision, or failure to meet deadlines. Such statements can quickly sabotage your candidacy for the job position you are applying for. Thus refrain from revealing too much.    

Here are some examples of how to present and narrate your answers to questions based on your strengths 

1) Leadership qualities  

Example: “I have always considered my ability to collaborate and lead people my greatest asset. During my experience as a team leader, I successfully divided my team into two respective groups while keeping their respective skills in mind and allotted both of the teams their tasks in the same order. I ensured they were confident in their abilities, suited for their roles, and did their tasks well. As a result, we successfully raised sales by 3% within our first month using the new task division. Not only do I find it easy to lead people and work with them, but I often know how to empathize with them, thus letting me communicate better with them appropriately it easy to lead people and work with them, but I often know how to empathize with them, thus letting me communicate better with them in an appropriate manner.”   

Alternative words: you can also state that you can guide or have the ability to lead or be a captain if the need be.  

2) Technical finesse and hard skills 

Example: “I have always been fond of staying up to date with the latest tech trends. From my current position and role, I know the concepts and details of SEO quite well, and as a result, I can foresee problems before they arise. I have always been fascinated by tech, and I get excited while tinkering with my system and gadgets, even in my personal life. This trait has always been helpful to me in my work environment, especially when I get to know any software intimately."   

Alternatively, it can be any complex skill depending on the job role. For administrative job roles, some common skills can be Data Entry, Scheduling, and Billing. Similarly, for a retail and sales-based job, skills like Product Knowledge, Lead Qualification as well as Customer Requirement Analysis (C.R.A) are a good set of skills to possess and mention, for IT Job roles you can mention your skills with programming languages, data structures, your experience with open-source material as well as web development.   

3) Precision and attention to detail 

Example: “I love discovering new ways and methods to approach content creation, but I am well renowned for my attention to minor details. It is due to this habit I am very particular with things like word choice because I believe precise language can transform any mediocre content into something significantly greater, it is due to this habit I have never failed a deadline in past. My content has always done well with search results, consistently, reaching the top of searches.”  

Alternatively, you can mention you are a process-oriented person, a system thinker, or have an efficient nature.  

4) A positive attitude  

Example: "My positive attitude and approach to most situations are my core strengths, having worked as a front desk staff that requires high energy and endurance. I can view a situation from different perspectives and can hence have the ability to empathize with my clients better and understand what they demand of me at a given time."   

Alternatively, you can state you have an upbeat personality, are forward-thinking, and don't lose motivation quickly.   

5) Approach to Problem-Solving  

Example: “I consider myself a very solution-oriented person and a considerably fast learner. In my experience as a software developer, I learned to do my tasks well, even under severe pressure, when designing a product for our clients because my team would not be able to win a contract unless we produced a model quickly, with as short of a deadline as possible. Under these circumstances, I have not been scared to ask a few extra questions to figure out the possible challenges ahead. I have ensured I did extensive research for our clients to be well prepared." 

A further list of traits that can be presented and listed as strengths in an interview 

Flexibility: being adaptive to the environment, adjustable, or versatile.  

Determination: being decisive and focused.  

Dedication: having a loyal or passionate nature.  

Creativity: being innovative and clever.  

Empathy: can be stated as being thoughtful, caring, and being a good listener. 

Learning: you can state you seek knowledge and have curiosity.  

Here are some examples on how to present and narrate your answers for questions based upon your weaknesses 

1) Self-criticism and negativity 

Example: "I often struggle with negative criticism and can become obsessed with avoiding a minor mistake if I receive supervision, focusing too much on perfecting my work, while I truly appreciate the guidance provided to me, as it helps me learn and be better, I can learn not to punish myself over minor errors, that everyone is bound to make."   

Alternatively, you can state you can be too reflective at times. 

2) The fear of public speaking  

Example: "I have often found public speaking very intimidating and have struggled with presentations due to that. As a result, I have decided to take countermeasures against it by enrolling in a public speaking course online, to be more confident in my abilities and learn to structure my speech better."   

Alternatively, your weakness is that you often get overlooked by your peers or higher executives.   

3) Procrastination  

Example: "Procrastination has been a bad habit for me for a long time. I believe that my fear of failure and, thus, rejection of my hard work may be the source of it. In my previous job as a content writer, keeping up with deadlines and necessary criteria demanded by the client was necessary for completing my task successfully. I started using calendar and time management-based apps like Evernote to manage my task and deadlines better than before. It directly affected my performance as crossing stuff from my task list made me feel accomplished and motivated, changing my approach to the harder tasks entirely."   

4) Task delegation  

Example: "I have often struggled with delegating tasks and chose to take a larger workload instead myself to make sure the work was done on time and finished perfectly. This tends to put the majority of work pressure on me; hence I have started using software to assign different tasks and track their completion by keeping records of who was assigned which job and how much of the work was done. This has helped me understand my coworkers much better, and as a result, trust them better and focus on my tasks more."  

Alternatively, you can mention that you are too demanding, controlling, or protective during certain occasions. 

5)Lack of experience or skill with a technology  

Example: "I mainly used C++ throughout my experience in my previous position, so I don't have much experience in python. However, I did a course in python for a semester at my university. Still, I have not been able to use it ever since, as I have been mostly working with other languages and technologies." 

A further list of traits that can be presented and listed as weaknesses in an interview- 

a) Impatience: you can state it as being unmindful or too eager sometimes.   

b) Insecure: being quiet too often or too restrained to speak up.   

c) Too Direct: being too blunt or straightforward at times.   

d) Too Detail-Oriented: micro-managing too often.   

e) Very Introverted or Extroverted: depending on either, you can state that you can always go unnoticed. Alternatively, for extroverts, you can mention how you can be too over the top at times.   

f) Disorganized: it can mean you are often irrational at times and can be disjointed.