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They are looking for you to make an honest assessment. No one is perfect and trying to act like you are will not impress anyone.
I always talk about how the situations where I am learned the most were usually the results of a mistake. Then I give an example or two (not a problem for me
) from my personal experience.
(I recognize this hedges the weakness thing a little, but does not avoid the question.)
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I think this is good advice. Everyone has weaknesses, and the purpose of the question isn't to lie and say some BS "positive/negative" type of answer. If your weakness is that you aren't always the most organized person, saying something like this is good: "Sometimes I tend to get overloaded with work and can get disorganized. I've worked hard to stay on top of it, and succeed at that more often than not. However, there at times I still need to work on this."
It's a judgment call overall; some people (lower level HR screeners, or lower level managers that don't seem particularly intelligent) may respond better to the obvious crap like "My weakness is I work too hard and take on too many projects." However, if you are interviewing with an intelligent and strong manager, you are going to need to give a better answer than the above one. It's all about catering to your audience; just be careful about giving answers to this question that are obviously prefabricated and contain limited honesty. Think about the answers YOU want to hear if you are interviewing someone and ask this question.