{"id":33701,"date":"2013-08-01T12:15:06","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T16:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=33701"},"modified":"2013-07-27T23:53:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-28T03:53:23","slug":"what-are-your-weaknesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=33701","title":{"rendered":"What are your Weaknesses?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Ashley Crace, Head Editor, INALJ West Virginia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What are your Weaknesses?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"AshleyCrace\"<\/a>When I practiced for job interviews, I used notecards with common interview questions, gathered from varied sources.\u00a0 I started doing this on recommendation from a friend and it worked well for me.\u00a0 I felt more prepared and articulate in the actual interview.<\/p>\n

One of my answers just never seemed right, though I practiced it many times.\u00a0 It was my answer to the question, \u201cWhat are your weaknesses?\u201d.\u00a0 <\/b>This question typically follows, \u201cWhat are your strengths?\u201d which I found to be much less ambiguous.<\/p>\n

It is easy for us to highlight our strengths based on skills and experience that we have as they relate to a specific position.\u00a0 The \u201cWhat are your weaknesses?\u201d question, however is more complex.\u00a0 I asked myself, do I really want to point out my weaknesses to a potential employer?<\/b>\u00a0 The answer is probably, no.\u00a0 But, I also want to be honest and present myself accurately.\u00a0\u00a0 If the potential employer were to hire me, they would eventually find out the areas in which I lack experience, skill, or knowledge.<\/p>\n

So, I started by asking myself \u201cWhat are<\/b> my weaknesses?\u201d\u00a0 I wanted to figure out in what areas I needed improvement.\u00a0 By doing this, I was able to take action and work on improving those areas<\/b>.\u00a0 This could be done through a volunteer position, an internship, independent study, webinars, courses, or any other way I could find to work on a particular area.<\/p>\n

I have always disliked the strategy of answering the question by taking a weakness and turning it into strength. For example, you could say, \u201cI am just too organized.\u201d or \u201cI tend to take on too much.\u201d.\u00a0 Personally, I think the cat is out of the bag on that answer; your potential employer has most likely used the same strategy or heard it many times.<\/p>\n

So, what I finally came up with as a suitable answer was honesty<\/b>.\u00a0 Since I had actually identified my weaknesses and taken action to improve on those areas, I felt this provided me with a perfect answer to this complex question.\u00a0 So, when asked, \u201cWhat are your weaknesses?\u201d I would answer something like this, \u201cHaving realized that I lacked collection development experience, I worked on a project during my internship to weed a VHS collection and help make decisions about whether or not the materials should be replaced by ordering the item in DVD format. While I still have a ways to go in learning about collection development, I feel that this experience, coupled with my education, has given me a good foundation to improve upon.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Here is another example: \u201cI have never felt confident with public speaking.\u00a0 Because of this, I joined a Toastmaster\u2019s group and have been working on this skill.\u00a0 I still have work to do to improve my confidence in public speaking, but have definitely made headway.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think that the most important thing to remember is that you must feel comfortable and confident with your answers.\u00a0 It is important to explore different answers to find the best way for you to answer a question.<\/b>\u00a0 This idea may work well for you, too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ashley Crace, Head Editor, INALJ West Virginia What are your Weaknesses? When I practiced for job interviews, I used notecards with common interview questions, gathered from varied sources.\u00a0 I started doing this on recommendation from a friend and it worked well for me.\u00a0 I felt more prepared and articulate in the actual interview. One…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[233,4176,3592,5040,3595,217,5039],"class_list":["post-33701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-articles-2","tag-ashley-crace","tag-blog","tag-honesty","tag-inalj-west-virginia","tag-interview-questions","tag-what-are-your-weaknesses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-8Lz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}