What are your strengths and weaknesses?

"What are your strengths and weaknesses?" OR "Could you tell me what are your top 5 strengths and weaknesses?" - every interviewer loves to ask that question; especially in the HR interview round. Even though this question has been asked in almost every interview and will continue to be asked for foreseeable future, the interviewees will continue to make the same mistake: not being prepared to handle that question. In fact, preparing for this question is easy and a well prepared answer can significantly improve your chances of selection. Let's take a detailed look at how to answer it with confidence and impress the interviewer.

The Motive Or The Reason This Question Is Asked:

Simply speaking, the interviewer has to make a choice between you and maybe other candidates. They'd make a very well informed choice and I strongly believe that it's your responsibility to make the interviewer pick you. What's working in your favor is that other candidates have NOT prepared for this question very well and you are already a step ahead by reading this article. All you need to do is introspect, find out what your real strengths and weaknesses are and then associate them with the job, designation, role you are being interviewed for. While preparing keep in mind that the interviewer typically is assessing you -

To find out whether your strengths are in alignment with the job role and company culture
If selected, can you perform the job well?
You are a better choice over other applicants
You will not need a lot of hand-holding on the job.
Your skills and previous work-experience are in-sync with the job profile
You are a team player and can work very well with other team members

Let's find out how to do this, like a real professional:

Our preparation work will begin by analysing what are the most typical mistakes most candidates make and then avoiding them. I can bet that none of you would have really introspected about your own strengths and weaknesses. Talking to your mother, wife, sister, father or a close friend about what they think are your strengths or weaknesses would be a great start. Even if this exercise does not tell you anything about the key strengths / weaknesses you have that you can relate with the job, don't worry. We'll find out how to do that in a minute. A lot of people won't really talk about their own strengths or weaknesses by just being modest; but that's not what will work in your favor. Find a midway that does not make you feel like you're bragging or boasting.

One important point you shouldn't forget is that you should also be very careful about choosing your strengths. There are strengths that may look like 'weaknesses' or not strengths at all and weaknesses that will look like your strengths (viz. I work very hard). With all that background and homework, I think you can now start jotting down your greatest strengths and weaknesses.

Finding Your Key Strengths and Weaknesses:

Finding your key strengths is easy. Ask following questions to yourself:

Are you experienced in anything that can be useful in the potential job?
Do you have any natural or acquired talents that can be employed on the job? For example if you could be great at organizing, accounting or learning new things.
Do you have any soft skills like good grasp over language, are you an influencer, team building, negotiating etc.
Think about a difficult situation in the past in your life and figure out what helped you tackle it successfully. Look for special abilities or strengths that helped you in that situation without you even noticing them.
Your education or special training should not go unnoticed. Can you relate any of those with the job profile you are being interviewed for?

I'd recommend picking up three key strengths and one or two weaknesses that you are aware of. Weaknesses can be found out by going through this general list. Check if you have any of these -

Not paying attention to health
Indecision
Stage fear, talking / addressing to a group of people
Shyness
Paying attention to tougher problems and missing out on easier problems
Hesitation in initiating a conversation with stranger
Very emotional - which in several situations turns out to be a weakness (be prepared to narrate an example)
Not good command over spoken / written English (or other language that matters for your job).

An important note about 'Weakness': There are no super humans with zero weaknesses. Everyone has some or the other type of weakness. Don't make your weakness look like your strength. For example "I seek perfection in my job and that makes me work for long time". Don't be stupid. A weakness is a weakness; and it can be improved.

Let's take a look at following sample answers:

My key strength is punctuality. I love getting this done well within time so that there's always some scope of improvement. In my school days, we'd get punished for being late even by a minute. But that also taught me the importance of being punctual. It's a quality that's helped me in my personal life and professional life so far.

This answer allows interviewer to ask questions about your school days and you may get a chance to narrate an incident where punctuality helped you. You may then relate experiences from your life story and narrate them to the Interviewer; thereby shifting the mood to lighter one.

I think my greatest strength is sticking to commitment. It's a quality I must have inherited from my father. In my last job, I had committed to deliver three presentations within a week's time. On the day before the deadline, the local computers broke down and unfortunately the backup did not work either. I could have delayed the submission by citing the reasons; but I decided to do all of that work by pulling an all-nighter. I was only after successful submission that I infomed by manager and client about the incident.

The candidate's already built up an interesting story that highlights the key strength and gets interviewer's attention about a real-life incidence. The interviewer may be tempted to ask more questions which would be about this incidence.

(About your weakness)

My greatest weakness is the fear of public speaking. I remember I was in school and the teacher had few of the students participate in a speech competition. When my turn came, went to the stage and the sight of everyone looking at me totally blanked me. I just stood there for about half a minute and began crying. I was a laughing stock at the school among my friends for the next few days. That incident still haunts me and has resulted into my fear of public speaking.

The candidate has not only informed about the weakness but also associated an interesting story that even the interviewer might have experienced in his/her life. This answer will typically lead to the Interviewer asking what steps are you taking to overcome this weakness. This can be answered as follows:

Well, I think I can handle this problem by speaking up about technical points in team-meetings. That should be a great start; because I'll be talking about things I know and don't have to memorise. I think one more thing I can do is to deliver a small presentation to my friends or colleagues about new technology or on an interesting topic. I think increasing my audience size step by step is the right way to fix this problem. I look forward to this opportunity in your company

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The question can be asked indirectly:

What if the interviewer never asks you the question? Will all your preparation go waste? Nope! Any interviewer (especially the HR interviewer) will definitely ask this question; but maybe in some other form like: Why should we hire you?, Why you and not the other candidate should be selected for this role?, Give me top reasons we should hire you and so on. Look for an opportunity and grab the control of the course of your interview.

Let's Do An Answering and Commenting Round:

If you have prepared an answer for this question, just write it down below. I and our fellow CEans can comment on your answer. We can help each other build a better answer to this question.

Start posting your answers below!