What's your greatest weakness?
It’s the dreaded, yet quintessential, interview question: What’s your greatest weakness?
You could say the question is lazy, intrusive, and unnecessary. People already have a hard time talking about their struggles, let alone bringing them up to a complete stranger. So instead, they avoid it with a cliche, insincere response, usually along the lines of “My greatest weakness is actually a strength.” So the whole thing ends up being a futile endeavor.
Fortunately, fewer companies are asking this question during interviews, or they’re reframing it in a more productive fashion. During my most recent job hunt, I was never asked straight up “What’s your greatest weakness?” Instead, it was something like “What’s a skill you’re working on?” or “What’s an area of growth for you?”, or even “Tell me about a failed project you worked on and how you dealt with it.”
No matter how it’s worded, plenty of interviewers still ask this. And when they do, they’re looking for transparent and relevant self reflection and self awareness. Every person is always looking to get better at something, no matter how minor the skill. Companies want to see this.
So when you’re asked this kind of question, it’s best to be honest, but also strategic. Interviewers will see right through any kind of mediocre or dishonest answer. Avoid things like “I work too hard” or “I’m too detail oriented.” These are lazy answers.
At the same time, you don’t want to focus your answer on a critical skill—if you’re a software engineer applying for a senior software engineering role, you don’t want “coding” to be your weakness.
Basically, you want your answer to be something that's not truly bad, nor something that's completely irrelevant and canned. From there, give examples on how you’re actively working to improve that skill.
Going back to our software engineer example: Perhaps you’re well-versed in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is most of the company’s tech stack. But maybe you still need a little work with PHP. So you could say something like:
"My PHP knowledge isn't where I'd like it to be. I know you're looking for that, and I'm taking online classes now to help me catch up.”
It’s specific enough to be relevant to the role, but not so critical that the candidate wouldn’t be able to fulfill the job duties. And they mentioned what specifically they were doing to improve their PHP knowledge.
I was once asked, “What’s something you might struggle with in this role?” My answer revolved around my specific experience (or lack thereof) in the industry I was applying in:
“I’ve only ever worked in the tech industry, so my experience in different industries isn’t as diverse as I’d like. There may be some things I need to relearn or learn from scratch, but that’s kind of why I want to change things up and look for a role where I can continue to learn and grow.”
I stated my “weakness” and also provided a proactive solution for improving that weakness.
It turns out, this company actually wanted to hire someone from an outside industry in order to bring in fresh ideas and a different way of thinking, so it worked out pretty well.
I know we all hate getting asked this question, but it’s not going away any time soon—best to be prepared for it.
Overtime
Other work-related stuff I want to talk about without dedicating an entire newsletter to it.
Literally a day after I published my last newsletter—in which I wrote about artificial intelligence—I got an email from Notion announcing their new AI writing assistant. I use Notion all the time, so I'm super intrigued by this and looking forward to trying it out, but I know I'm gonna feel grossed out by it. I'm a fool for not mentioning this previously, so I'll say it loud and clear now: I'm fascinated by AI writing in a pure curiosity sense, but it's morally wrong and disingenuous, and it absolutely should not be a thing.
Happy Hour
Fun things I’m doing, TV shows and movies I’m watching, games I’m playing, music I’m listening to, and other neat stuff I want to share.
I'm back to using an Apple Watch after I sold my Series 4 about a year ago. I went with the Series 8 this time around, as well as the smaller size. I have to say, the smaller size feels way better. If you know any cool apps that make the Apple Watch even more useful, let me know!
As I'm publishing this, I'm taking the A line commuter train to downtown Denver for a quick work trip. I've never been to Denver before, so I'm pretty excited to explore.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be taking a break to enjoy the holidays, so I'll see you on January 5. In the meantime, catch up on some older newsletter issues if you’re a new subscriber, and feel free to follow me on Twitter or Instagram for my off-hours shenanigans.
Also, let me know if there are topics you want to read about or questions you have—I'm all ears! And if you think a friend or family member would enjoy this newsletter, feel free to forward this email and tell them to subscribe!