“What’s A Good Weakness To Mention In A Job Interview?”: People Went Wild With These Funny, Epic, And Sometimes Serious Answers

"I once got a job partly because of my honest answer to this: I need to know why I am doing what I'm doing. I don't like being told to do something without an end game in mind, without knowing the reasoning behind it. When I work, I need something to aim at. Some employers don't like this because they like their employees to be cogs in a machine they control. I don't like those jobs and I don't want them. The place I was applying to was not that kind of workplace, and they liked my answer. Ended up being a great job where my boss valued my input and trusted me to take the reins on a variety of tasks."

"My biggest weakness is the inability to think of good answers to bad interview questions."

"I always say that my biggest weaknesses are the ones I don't know about yet. Because the ones I do know about I can (and do) work to improve on. And then I segue into a conversation about how I take criticism very well and am always open to suggestions for ways in which I can improve my performance."

"I take words too literally."

"Can you give an example?"

"Yes."

owlsquid said:
"I was asked this during an interview with Uber and I was completely caught off guard — I ended up fumbling and saying something along the lines of 'I cannot ride a unicycle.' for which I immediately regretted..."

MeltdownInteractive replied:
"I would have burst out laughing at that if I was interviewing you."

"Money. I'll work much harder if you pay me more."

"I have absolutely no patience for office politics, conspiracies, bullying, micromanagement, or corporate cheerleading. I want to work somewhere friendly and open and fair, where I can treat colleagues as equals and be pretty much left to do my job - in return, I can do it extremely well."

"I told them I was lazy. Then I went on to explain that if there's a simpler, more efficient way to complete a task, I was going to find it. This segued perfectly into a discussion of my skills in automation, scripting, and other development projects in which I streamlined some processes or others. After I was hired, the new boss told me my response had stuck with the interviewers after I left."

"I always mention a bad short-term memory, but I use list-making to fix it and ensure everything is addressed.

They are usually I impressed that I gave a real answer AND had a solution for it."

"I sing in the shower. Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I’ll hit someone with my car."

lolwutalan said:
"Why do you want to work he-"

"I'd say my greatest weakness is listening."

Calan_adan replied:
“What’s your greatest-“

“Weakness? Finishing other peoples’ sentences.”

"I think this is related:

For my current job interview, near the end, my (now) manager opened up the laptop, opened Excel, and asked me to do some equations there.

Now, I didn't know ANY Excel at the time (even though the job description required it). I looked a little embarrassed at him and then told him: 'Okay, please bear with me...'

Then I minimized Excel, opened the browser, Google, and how to multiply the excel equation, I sneak peek at him while I'm doing this and he was smiling.

Then, I followed the instructions and completed the task.

He was like: 'You got the job buddy!'

Then he told me it was actually great to see me genuinely express my weakness in an area, and impressed by how I dealt with it.

**He did end up sending to get a quick course on Excel btw."

"One of my actual weaknesses: when I get nervous/excited, I tend to speak really fast and breathlessly. This can actually have a negative influence on my job as I work in healthcare and have to respond/communicate during emergencies. For my next interview, I will bring this up, and say I have discovered that taking a second to collect myself and take a deep breath seems to calm my nerves and allow me to do/say what is needed in a more collected manner."

"I usually say my anxiety (which is true, I'm a functional basket case on the outside) and how I work around it and give specific examples. Like I have an endless amount of checklists and notes because I'm paranoid that I'll forget something important, and cheat sheets to help me remember important information. I get nervous in new places, so before I go somewhere new I look up the place on google maps, if it's a business I look to see if they have photos of the inside."

"For entry-level interviews, I always said my lack of experience, but then followed up with my eagerness to learn."

"Terrible handwriting is my biggest weakness"

"How so?"

"You’ll never know what I wrote down. It looks like a blind man wrote."

"As someone who interviews hundreds of people each year, this question stumps almost every person asked. The worst responses are: I have trouble being on time, I’m argumentative, I don’t get along with...

I also don’t think disguising strengths as weaknesses is a good idea either.

The best response I think I have heard (besides not being able to ride a unicycle) is: I make mistakes, but I am only human. I am sure I will make some mistakes along the way learning the ins and outs of this position, but as soon as I know I made a mistake, I try to fix it immediately and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Just my two cents."

"I was honest and said that I feel frustrated when my talents and skills are wasted on doing mindless tasks. I’d rather be solving problems, thinking ahead, and doing good work."

"'What is your greatest weakness?' 'Ummmm probably that I have no strengths.'"

"For my current job, I said that I had a hard time sharing my ideas with new groups."