How to Answer: What is your greatest weakness as an HR professional?
Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Paycom job interview.
16. What is your greatest weakness as an HR professional?
Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
This common interview question is an opportunity to demonstrate your self-insight. Interviewers ask this question to learn more about your self-awareness and ability to reflect on room for personal improvement. Further, it's an opportunity to screen out candidates who may actually have what the interviewer sees as a make-or-break weakness.
Written by Rachel Hills on January 22nd, 2022
How to Answer
Give an honest answer about a real weakness you have been focusing on, and describe your plan to work on it. Just make sure the weakness isn't a core competency of the Paycom job description. Reflect on traits you want to work on but won't affect overall job success.
Honesty and self-awareness are key for this question. Interviewers have heard it all and will see through phony attempts to present a trait as a weakness when it's not.
Written by Rachel Hills on January 22nd, 2022
1st Answer Example
"I've been working on finding my voice when meeting with upper-level management. While I know the ideas I bring to the table are valuable, I've always been anxious when it comes to engaging people when the power dynamics are not in my favor. So, I have been working on growing my confidence when pitching ideas in these meetings. This has been my primary area of focus for improvement in the last few months, and one of my colleagues even recently commented that he had noticed a difference in the frequency of my contributions."
Written by Rachel Hills on January 22nd, 2022
2nd Answer Example
"I take a lot of pride in the work I do and often struggle to delegate tasks to other members of my team. Even though I trust my coworkers and know what fantastic work they do, I've got into the habit of seeing tasks through from start to finish. I got to a point where this was no longer feasible with the new responsibilities I had taken on, so I've been working on feeling more comfortable asking for help from my colleagues when I need it. While this weakness is still a work in progress for me, I've learned how important it is to communicate effectively with and rely on my team."
Written by Rachel Hills on January 22nd, 2022