Esra Gurkan for MAIL ONLINE reports:
Job interviews are an unpleasant chore that we all need to go through to get the role of our dreams. It’s easy enough to talk about why you want the job and why you’re the best person to do it. But there is one question that everyone dreads and is most likely to trip us all up: What’s your biggest weakness? [1]
Reddit received over 1,600 comments posted on a thread, which asked for the best and the worst answers to this question. Here are a few that stood out:
What’s Your Biggest Weakness?
• “I have trouble delegating tasks sometimes. I like to do things myself to ensure they’re done to my personal standards, but it is something I’m working on.”
• “I take failure a bit too hard sometimes.”
• To add some humor, someone suggested, “Remain silent, and pull an index card out of your pocket that says ‘I over-prepare.’”
• “I’m overly critical of my work.”
A few answers that are not recommended:
• “Those eyes of yours.”
• “I don’t work well with people”
• “My biggest weakness is that I have too many strengths.”
• “I’m too soft spoken”
• “People say I can be condescending. That’s when you talk down to people.”
One helpful suggestion was to give a skills-based weakness, something you can take steps to remedy, like:
• “I’m not too familiar with Excel at the moment, but I’m planning on taking classes this coming month.”
When you stand before God there’s a pretty good chance that the subject of your weaknesses will come up. What will you say? “Those eyes of Yours” probably won’t win you any points, because the weaknesses God is concerned about are your moral shortcomings. And don’t waste your breath denying that you have any such weaknesses, for the Bible has said, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth” (1 John 1:8). So, denying your faults amounts to calling God a liar — not a good strategy.
However, the Bible goes on in this very passage to say, “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (1 John 1:9). Here the Apostle John gives us the only acceptable answer to this question; confess your failings and ask for God’s forgiveness. There’s no reason to fear this question before God. He’s not looking for a reason to reject you; rather, He promises to accept every sinner who responds honestly and with humility.
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1. ‘What’s your biggest weakness?’ Bosses reveal how you should really answer the dreaded interview question,” by Esra Gurkan for MAILONLINE, October 10, 2016.