Interview tomorrow. What's your strategy for this question?

[ilya]

They've heard all the BS before a thousand times, just tell them the truth. Of course that's easier said than done...first you have to know the truth...

[shant]

The most overused and cliche answer is "I'm a perfectionist." Avoid that one.

[C.R.E.A.M.]

Yeah I'm not going to use one of the cliché answers. But what do you guys think of some light hearted humor thrown into an inteview (that's used sparingly, and not overdone, obviously)? I was thinking of doing something like this:

Interviewer: so what would you say are your weaknesses?
Me: Hmm, I have to go with chocolate. Definitely chocolate. <I'll laugh a little bit here>. Ok ok, I suppose you want to know something relevant to my past work experience. In all seriousness...[and then I talk about my actual weaknesses]

I know it's kind of cheesy, but I was thinking it might get the interviewer to laugh a little bit and shows that I'm comfortable dealing with people. I was also thinking it might make the interviewer more comfortable with me, like we're having a conversation between friends, rather than some high stress job interview.

[Leaky Eye]

If you are going to use humor try to make it funny [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[xorbie]

planning your laughter is a good touch.

[bobman0330]

[ QUOTE ]

If you could be any part of a car, which part would you be and why?

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, that's terrible. That's like a parody of a really [censored] interview question it's so bad. Why are people so bad at interviewing?

(No offense to you personally, but I went through a spate of interviews a few months ago, and I'm still a bit pissed about how crappy most of my interviewers were.)

[billygrippo]

"F U, jerk! im perfect!"

[The Yugoslavian]

I think employers would love to know they are signing on someone who can introspectively identify and manage his/her weaknesses. Many (most) people basically ignore any/all weaknesses and never resolve or work on them. One of the most important aspects of becoming a very valuable asset to a company is the ability to continuously improve at what you're doing.

So, if you currently ignore your weaknesses or shovel them into your subconcious, do some hard thinking about them and what you want to do to improve/compensate in specific job situations and in your career path in the future. Whatever you discover thinking about that will be your answer.

Yugoslav

[C.R.E.A.M.]

[ QUOTE ]
If you are going to use humor try to make it funny [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I know, that humor was pretty bad. I think I'm over thinking this too much. I'm just going to go in there, be my natural wonderful, charming self, and get the job.

[surfinillini]

[ QUOTE ]
I've got a job interview coming up this week. I consider myself fairly adept at handling interviews, for the most part. The one question I'm never sure how to handle though, is when they ask you about your weaknesses. It's usually something like "what do you think are your weaknesses" or "if we spoke to your last employer, what areas would they say are your weakest".

What do you think is the best way to tackle this question?

[/ QUOTE ]

whenever they ask this my most common response is that basically, "I'm known to work too hard and take work too seriously."

Elaborate a little, but even this weakness is definitely a plus employers will eventually see.