Interview Hacks

Q – What are your weaknesses

This is one of the most intrigued question during any interview. It can find its relevance in interview of a fresher, middle level managers and even for leaders.
A professional weakness may be considered to include any of the following –
      1. Something that is not a natural strength

2. Any feedback during your last appraisal where you have been shown an area to make improvement
3. A weakness is something that has taken you longer to master than others
4. Something you have tend to overlook you had more attention on others
5. Anything on which you would require “extra “support from the new organisation

Don’t let your weaknesses phase you out – The employers know that we all have them. Some people try hiding then and some talk open about it. Responding to the employers in roundabout manner can harm you badly. Its always best to speak with openness, frankness and most importantly “Articulation but not manipulation” You would need to have thought this one through and have several points prepared.
What is not required is a catalogue of your personal failings or bad habits that could cost you your candidature in the interview what is needed is an honest and articulated assessment of areas where you lack facility or talent and how you have recognised and dealt with these.

• Always Do –
  Tell them what are you doing to deal with your weakness. Anything such as attending trainings, reading books, doing simulation exercise or taking mentoring from seniors.Always provide professional and business weakness that is related to the work.
• Never Do

Speak roundabout, Taking about emotional, Trust, faith aspects, Showing strengths as weaknesses or showing weakness which is direct contradiction of what you mentioned in your resume ( Unintentionally many people do this)

Some Examples of weakness –

(Managerial profile)

• At times I struggle to differentiate the thin boundary where standardization stops and innovation starts. Mistakenly, Innovating the standardized processes and standardizing the innovation have been my weakness. Currently I am studying some Harvard case studies to conceptualize and understand the two phenomena.
• Inappropriate Design thinking – Understanding customer future problems is good to drive customer engagement but having missed some crucial elements on assumption is lethal. I need to improve my design thinking with valid assumptions though in house mentoring.

(For all profiles)

• Accepting the work- load from the team when colleagues fail to deliver or tend to deliver poor quality of work. Resulting in either increase in my stress, frustration or affecting my delivery of critical tasks that are assigned personally to me.

For Fresher

· Being over enthusiastic about learning the new things, I take too many thing on my plate , not realising the complexity level of the tasks , cost of failure and delivery impact. I am learning to make analogous assessment and calling experts judgement for deciding on such issues.