What are your weaknesses?

Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
What You Need to Know
What to Avoid
Pro Tip
Experienced Example

Most interviewers want to get to know who you are you, as a candidate. They want to get a feeling for your personality and how well you might fit in with the rest of their teams. They also need to assess your work ethic, and whether you would meet or exceed their expectations. This goes beyond the skills you've listed on your resume, and will be evaluated against the extent of your research, which will be self-evident throughout your interview.

Spend a little time on the website, and you'll find their recruiters offer tips for great answers to their interview questions. For example, here is some great advice specific to this interview question: "For failure-related questions, it's okay to be self-critical. Share what you learned, how you recovered, and how you grew. Be forthcoming. Don't embellish or omit parts of the story. Consider your successes and failures in relation to the Leadership Principles. Use examples that showcase your expertise and how you've taken risks, succeeded, failed, and grown. Failure is a necessary part of innovation. We believe in failing early and persevering until we get it right. Have examples that showcase your experience and how you've taken risks, succeeded, failed, and grown. Provide examples of how you've taken responsibility for any shortfalls or mistakes. Provide examples when you sought feedback and learned from your mistakes. Show how you took ownership of business problems and worked to find solutions that improved performance. Show how you've honored commitments and followed through on tasks until they were completed."

"Best Practices: Focus on what you owned and worked on rather than what your team did. 'I' is better than 'we.' Don't finger-point or blame-shift when discussing challenges. Focus on how you found a solution. Avoid generalizations. Specifics are key. Give a detailed account of one situation for each question you answer. Use data or metrics to support your example. Keep in mind that some of our most successful programs have risen from the ashes of failed projects."

Similar to one's failures, any professional weakness you aim to overcome should be thought of as a growth opportunity. There are lessons to be learned from them and experience to be gained. Taking ownership of your weaknesses and sharing them with your interviewer should be done with confidence and without shame. What you are, in fact, doing is taking charge of your own development, sharing where you are at in your career and that you are driven to continue to succeed, and this should be done with both pride and humility. Taking this approach will showcase your emotional intelligence and will serve as a testament to your experience level.

"I'd say that I am very team-oriented and I ask a lot of questions in general, but that one weakness is not knowing the full extent of the work of the other departments in the company. So, I guess my weakness is not being as cross functional as I could be. I consider myself a stakeholder, and am invested in the success of the company. I consider myself, for my small part, to be a trusted resource of information. But, what I'd like to be able to do, is if someone asked me a question, and I didn't know the answer, would be to say, 'I don't know, but I know someone in the cloud division who does. Let me get them on the phone.' So that is a weakness I've been gradually aiming to overcome."