What's your greatest weakness? Perhaps the most dreaded question asked in an interview...

Candidate strengths are relatively easy to to assess during an interview. The interviewer has a more than willing partner in the candidate to discuss at length all the things the potential employee does really well. Determining weaknesses is far more challenging, both for interviewers and candidates alike. Part of the problem is that the goals of the candidate are different than the goals of the interviewer when it comes to dealing with weaknesses. The candidate has some pretty obvious goals during the interview:

Candidate’s goals:

• To sell themselves to the interviewer
• To portray themselves in the best possible light
• To make it appear they are the ideal, perfect candidate for the job
• To not disclose any weaknesses or shortcomings
• To tell the the interviewer what the candidate thinks they want to hear
• For the interviewer to hire them rather than anyone else

The interviewer, at least at Pinnacol, also has some specific things we are trying to accomplish:

• To understand what the candidate has actually done in their current and prior positions as an indicator of what they will really do if hired into your opening (the essence of "Behavioral Interviewing")
• To understand both the strengths and weaknesses realizing there is no such thing as a perfect candidate
• To hire the best candidate based on accurate, meaningful job-related information

When it comes to discussing weaknesses there are specific reasons, from the interviewer's perspective, why this is important:

The first is fairly obvious - If we know what the weaknesses are and they are critical enough to preclude the candidate from further consideration, it helps form our hiring/not hiring decision. This is probably the single biggest reason candidates don't like to disclose weaknesses.

More importantly to Pinnacol is whether the candidate is self-aware to the point of being able to candidly acknowledge where their weaknesses lie and to discuss the steps they are taking to address those weaknesses. Pinnacol does a tremendous amount of training of its employees and the reality is that training is done, in large part, to specifically help our employees overcome their weaknesses.

Amanda Augustine

A lot of books on interviewing suggest turning the weakness question on its head by saying things like "I work too hard", "I'm too much of a perfectionist", I pay too much attention to detail", etc. For any seasoned interviewer this turning a weakness into a strength technique is painfully obvious and really does the candidate no benefit. Companies really do need to know candidate strengths and weaknesses because, as mentioned above, there is no such thing as a perfect candidate. The question companies are simply trying to assess with this question is whether they can live with the weaknesses identified (will the weaknesses impact the candidate's ability to succeed in the role?), and secondarily though perhaps more importantly, can they help the candidate overcome these weaknesses to maximize their future success in the role. Amanda Augustine, in a recent bog on The Ladders,  has some great pointers for candidates to consider. She talks about the STAR method as a good way for candidates to address this, and other interview questions. Here are a couple of Amanda's tips:

• Think of a Situation or Task that you’ve struggled with in the past. This could be anything from having difficulty remaining cool under pressure, being afraid of public speaking, or getting too caught up in the little details of a project and missing deadlines.
• Identify what Actions you’ve taken to improve your skill-set or overcome this shortcoming at the office. For instance, if you’ve been too efficient for your own good in the past and ended up cutting corners, you can explain what measures you’ve taken to ensure you produce a high-quality, error-free product now.
• Discuss the Results of your actions. Are you no longer struggling with this skill at the office? Have your customer scores or employee assessments improved? Are you performing better at your organization? Prove you’re an accomplished professional by explaining the final success.

At Pinnacol we frame our interview questions around this same STAR format so for candidates interviewing at Pinnacol Amanda's tips are great advice!