How to Answer: What are your greatest weaknesses?
Advice and answer examples written specifically for a Nursing job interview.
22. What are your greatest weaknesses?
How to Answer
Within every differing healthcare institution and organization are nursing roles that span a wide variety of patient care and administrative duties. Knowing that their department is certainly unique, nurse managers know that any candidate they consider for hire will come with some sort of shortcomings. What is most important to the nursing leader is that their top candidate knows their weaknesses and has a plan of attack for how they will work on them from day one on the job.
Rather than giving a canned answer like 'I care too much' or 'I'm too critical of my own work', put some thought into the nursing position that you are interviewing for and where your experience or skills may fall a little short. Then discuss with your interviewer that you are cognizant of the fact that you lack a specific nursing skill or experience for their job and are willing to put in the time to train and get up to speed quickly if you emerge as their top candidate.
Written by Ryan Brunner
1st Entry Level Example
"I would imagine that a perceived new weakness of mine as a new nursing graduate would be my lack of direct experience in the emergency and urgent care setting and I acknowledge that I do lack this direct experience. But I'm confident that my work experiences in fast paced environments prior to and during nursing school have prepared me well for what I'll be stepping into here. I have the ability to multi-task with ease and stay calm in the face of pressure. As you'll see from the reference letters from my preceptors, these characteristics help make me a great fit for this role."
Written by Ryan Brunner
2nd Entry Level Example
"During nursing school, a weakness was pointed out to me by one of my preceptors that I was unaware of. She said I have a soft voice and need to speak up more and sound more assertive to be taken seriously as a nurse. I realized that my soft voice was due to a discomfort with public speaking, so I decided to address the issue. I recently joined Toastmasters International, which is an organization that helps individuals improve their public speaking, communication, and leadership skills. Since all these skills are essential to have as a nurse, this group will be the best for me to improve all of these skills, versus other groups that only focus on public speaking. I found a club near me that allows online and in-person attendance, and I start next week. The director told me that I could expect to improve my skills dramatically with as little as 20 hours of attendance, so I hope to see an improvement in these skills quickly."
Written by Krista Wenz on January 31st, 2023
1st Experienced Example
"As you can see from my experience, I have spent a majority of my nursing career in an inpatient setting. While I'm confident that my time in med/surg hospital units has prepared me for this role, I know there will be nuances to working in an outpatient clinical setting that I will need to learn and become accustomed to. I do not foresee this as any issue if I'm fortunate enough to be offered the job. I would prioritize learning the patient flow for scheduled appointments and documentation procedures for new patient consults and follow up visits in short order."
Written by Ryan Brunner
2nd Experienced Example
"I enjoy helping others, but an area of development I've been working on is that I can tend to be a fixer, offering to do something for someone who is struggling rather than taking the extra time to teach them to do it for themselves. As an experienced nurse, it's common for new grads to come to me for help. When they do, I make an effort to encourage them to self-help where possible and provide them with the training and resource to learn and do it for themselves. Sometimes, this requires a little more time and patience, but it's important that they build the skills they need to be successful, and I'm happy to be a part of that journey."
Written by Jaymie Payne on December 18th, 2022
About the Author
I began my healthcare career when I was a sophomore in high school and became an STNA (state-tested nursing assistant) at a local long-term care facility. I then went on to work as a nursing assistant at a local hospital and home healthcare agency. During that time, I pursued my Bachelor's in Business Administration: Human Resource Management and transitioned to working for one of the largest long-term care and post-acute rehab companies in the country. I supported the talent acquisition function, and in the span of 8 years, I screened and interviewed over 1,500 nurse aides, LPNs, and RNs.
I hold a very special place in my heart for nurses, as it's often a thankless and tiresome job. Not everyone is cut out to be a nurse, and I have great respect and admiration for those that choose this career path. As a content writer and interview coach for MockQuestions, my goal is to help you prepare and succeed in your upcoming interview. This article offers interview tips and advice along with 50 practice interview questions and answer examples to help you better understand what to expect and prepare for interview day! Wishing you the best of luck!
Learn more about Jaymie Payne