{"id":173,"date":"2007-04-02T08:45:44","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T07:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/04\/what-is-your-greatest-weakness\/"},"modified":"2007-04-02T08:45:44","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T07:45:44","slug":"what-is-your-greatest-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/04\/what-is-your-greatest-weakness\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;What is your greatest weakness?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<table>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"50%\">\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pic of an Awkward Question\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tomfotherby.com\/Images\/awkwardQuestion.jpg?w=620&#038;ssl=1\" \/><br \/>\n<small><em>&#8220;No, I didn&#8217;t download you off the Internet,<br \/> I gave birth to you. End of discussion!&#8221;<\/em><\/small>\n<\/td>\n<td>\nI have been asked this question in just about every interview I&#8217;ve been to. If I answered truthfully I&#8217;d be committing interview suicide (e.g. can you imagine saying something like &#8220;I have a bad web surfing habit&#8221;) and if I make something up like &#8220;I work too long hours&#8221; I seem like a suck-up. I think, rather than asking me to self-incriminate the question is actually designed to evaluate my ability to deal with awkward questions.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>These are the choice of answers:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Evade the question\n<li>Answer with a lie using a weakness that is actually a strength\n<li>Answer truthfully (because I have low self confidence this would expose a huge set of weaknesses: I&#8217;m bad at communicating at a very technical level, I&#8217;m a slow learner, I have a bad memory, I can&#8217;t think fast on the spot, I don&#8217;t like public speaking, I&#8217;m lacking in written skills, I have zero general knowledge, etc, etc)\n<li>Answer with a true but mild weakness (e.g. I like to focus on a small area and dig a niche for myself, therefore I can lack the global picture).\n<\/ol>\n<p>I think the best solution is to start with choice 1 and actually talk about how this question is a trick and then finish off with choice 4 to show a bit of sincerity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;No, I didn&#8217;t download you off the Internet, I gave birth to you. End of discussion!&#8221; I have been asked this question in just about every interview I&#8217;ve been to. If I answered truthfully I&#8217;d be committing interview suicide (e.g. can you imagine saying something like &#8220;I have a bad web surfing habit&#8221;) and if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomfotherby.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}