What is your greatest weakness?

How to Answer
Answer Example
Community Answers

The person asking this question wants to know if you can critically evaluate yourself. It is important to recognize your weaknesses so that you are aware of how they can affect you as a PA student and as a working PA. Be genuine in your response and show them how you are trying to grow despite your weakness.

"I would say my introverted nature is my biggest weakness. I grew up pretty shy but as I have worked with populations that are unable to advocate for themselves and realized that as a PA, it would be my job to make my patients feel comfortable and confident in the care I provide. I always try to acknowledge the introverted habits that do not serve me and push myself to be more extraverted, by doing things like asking questions when I am uncomfortable and taking on more public speaking roles."

Anonymous Answer

"I think that my greatest weakness is how introverted and soft-spoken I am. While being introverted in itself is not a weakness, I feel like it can sometimes be misunderstood as me not wanting to communicate or take part in the conversation. During my experience volunteering as an EMT and working as a clinical assistant, I have been able to find my voice a bit more to take part in conversations, especially when advocating for a patient and their needs."

Stephanie's Feedback

You do an excellent job of naming a specific growth area. To deepen the impact of your response, I suggest adding an additional sentence or two to further develop the part where you explain how you've been working to overcome this weakness. You mention being able to find your voice; can you provide some specific examples of how this has impacted your work?

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Anonymous Answer

"When I was younger I had a hard time saying no to people and often time felt overwhelmed by my workload. I use to get upset with myself for being such a “people pleaser”. As I matured, I learned skills to set healthy boundaries and self-reflect. I no longer have a negative connotation of being a “people pleaser” and now appreciate the fact that I genuinely care and want to help others. Before agreeing to a task, I now check in with myself and evaluate my capacity before over-committing myself."

Marcie's Feedback

It's great that you've decided to use people pleasing as your weakness because this can also be seen in a positive light (as you mention, it means that you genuinely care about others!) It's also excellent that you discuss the steps you've already taken to overcome and combat this weakness. Nice job!

Anonymous Answer

"Communication is one of the most important factors in being a part of a well-functioning and efficient team and I have had to work on my communication skills in order to help run a team of nurses in clinical research. I do this by clearly laying out goals for the team, setting timelines, and making sure that other team members understand their roles. Communication is something that I am still working on, and I will continue to work on it. I will improve by taking any feedback that I can from instructors or coworkers, and constantly checking in with them to make sure we understand each other well."

Marcie's Feedback

It's great that you're taking steps to improve this area of weakness. You might consider picking another weakness to discuss, however, that can be seen in a positive light (for example, perfectionism or having high standards, while definitely negatives, can be viewed positively too, whereas being a bad communicator isn't really ever seen as a good thing). If you choose to stick with this weakness, can you explain more about where you're lacking in this department? How did you come to realize this was a problem area for you? Have you received any recent feedback that your new/improved communication style is more effective?