How to answer the strengths and weaknesses question

What the interviewer is trying to find out

The question can feel like an invitation to praise yourself and then confess something, but an interviewer is usually listening for two things. The first is whether you understand the job well enough to know which of your qualities matter in it. The second is whether you can look at your own work honestly, which says a lot about how you'd respond to feedback once you started.

It also comes in several forms, and the same preparation covers all of them:

• "What would you say is your greatest strength?"
• "What's an area you're working on?" or "What would you like to develop in this role?"
• "What would your last manager say you could do better?"
• "Tell me about some feedback that was hard to hear."

The manager version is worth a moment's extra thought, because some employers will ask your referees similar questions. Your answer doesn't need to match word for word, but it should be something a person who has worked with you would recognise.

Choosing a strength to talk about

Start with the job ad and the duties it lists, then look for the overlap with what you're genuinely good at. A strength that appears in the ad, or clearly underpins something in it, gives the interviewer an easy connection to make. Good places to look include:

• Feedback you've had more than once, from a manager, customer, teacher or colleague
• Tasks people tend to hand to you, or ask you to check
• Parts of past jobs where things went better because you were there
• Something you've improved over time and can describe the before and after of

Once you have a candidate, make it specific. "I'm a hard worker" or "I'm a people person" could come from anyone in the room. "I'm good at calming down a customer who's already frustrated" tells the interviewer what you'd actually do on a busy Saturday. The hard skills and soft skills guide can help if you're unsure how to describe a quality that's harder to measure.

Then add one short example that shows the strength in use. A couple of sentences is usually enough, and if the interviewer wants more, they'll ask.

Here's how a strength answer might sound from someone applying for a room leader job at an early learning centre.

Choosing a weakness that's honest and workable

A good weakness answer has three parts that fit together: it's true, it's something that has had a real effect on your work, and you've taken some steps to manage it. The steps are often what an interviewer remembers most, so it's worth choosing a weakness where you can describe something concrete you've done.

It helps to think about the kinds of weakness that tend to sit comfortably in an interview. Most useful answers fall into one of a few groups:

• A skill you haven't needed much yet: a system, tool or type of task that wasn't part of your previous work but will matter more in this one
• A work habit with a cost: taking on too much, over-checking, writing too much, or putting off a task you find less interesting
• Something you've had feedback on: a comment from a performance review or supervisor that you've since acted on
• A confidence gap in one setting: speaking up in large meetings, for example, when you're comfortable in smaller ones

Keep the weakness in proportion to the role. If you're applying for a payroll officer job, "I sometimes find detailed reconciliation tedious" raises an obvious worry. The same person saying they've found it hard to push back when other teams send requests at the last minute is describing something real that won't stop them doing the job.

Here's an example from a graduate applying for a data analyst role.

Weaknesses that tend to work against you

Some weakness answers are so common that they tell the interviewer very little, and a few can raise doubts you didn't intend.

• A strength in disguise. "I'm a perfectionist" or "I care too much" is usually heard as avoiding the question.
• Something central to the job. Poor attention to detail in a quality control role, or discomfort with customers in a front-of-house job, gives the interviewer a reason to doubt you.
• A fixed personality trait. "I'm just not organised" sounds permanent. Describing a specific habit you're changing gives the interviewer something to work with.
• A weakness with no action attached. Naming a problem and stopping there leaves the interviewer to imagine how it plays out.
• Personal or health information. You don't need to present a health condition, disability or family circumstance as a weakness, and it isn't what the question is asking for.

If follow-up questions start moving into your health or family life, the guide to preparing for a job interview explains which questions an employer shouldn't ask and how to redirect them.

Putting the answer together

Each half follows a simple order. For a strength, name it, give a brief example and connect it to the role. For a weakness, name it, say how it has shown up in your work, explain what you've done about it and where things stand now. Around 45 seconds to a minute for each is plenty when spoken.

When the two are asked together, start with the strength and give both roughly equal time. You don't need to finish on a positive note by adding a second strength after the weakness. Ending on the progress you've made already does that job.

If the interviewer asks for more than one strength or weakness, it helps to have a second of each in reserve. Choose one that's different in kind from the first, so a second strength might be about how you work with people if the first was about a technical skill.

This combined answer comes from someone applying to be second in charge at a retail store.

Adjusting it to your situation

If you're looking for your first job, you can draw your strength from school, sport, volunteering or anything you've done regularly. Turning up to early training every week for years says something about reliability that an employer will understand. Your weakness can simply be a skill you haven't had the chance to build yet, as long as you can say how you plan to pick it up.

If you're changing careers, the strength often comes from what you know about the work from the other side, and the weakness is frequently the gap between the two fields. Naming that gap yourself, and showing you've started closing it, is more convincing than hoping the interviewer won't notice. The transferable skills guide explains how to describe experience in the language of the new field.

If you're experienced and applying for a similar role, avoid a weakness so small that it sounds evasive. A genuine development area often connects naturally to why you want the next step. For the opening question that usually comes before this one, see how to answer "tell me about yourself".

Here's how a career changer might answer, in this case an electrician applying for an estimator role with a building company.