How to Answer: What is your greatest weakness as an editor? What are you doing to improve it?
Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Newspaper Editor job interview.
26. What is your greatest weakness as an editor? What are you doing to improve it?
How to Answer
Choose a weakness that is related to a skill and not a character trait. Character traits are difficult to change"”for instance, you may naturally be inclined to keep to yourself (e.g. introverted). Skills, on the other hand, are learned behaviors. Think about a skill that you can learn more about and ask yourself if it's a critical error that would cause a lot of trouble. If it is, skip it and move on to a less critical skill.
Talk about how you're improving or intend to improve that skill. If possible, show that you're internalizing this improvement so that it becomes a permanent change.
Written by Ryan Brown
Answer Example
"To be honest, I'm not very good at editing punctuation. I tend to focus on the content, the structure and flow of the narrative. So I'm actually working on my attention to detail for punctuation. Even in my spare time, whenever I read anything, I have the Style Manual in front of me and I look at whether it conforms. If it doesn't, I look up how it ought to look."
Written by Ryan Brown