Why identify your weaknesses

Experiencing a lack of confidence can sometimes cause inefficiencies in your work. For example, you might feel unqualified to speak up at an important meeting when your idea could help the team to achieve a goal.

While being humble when working with others can be helpful, it is also necessary to maintain a certain amount of confidence to do your job at an optimal level. If this is the weakness you choose to present in your interview, emphasize why you value confidence, your understanding of the value you offer, and ways you have practiced displaying confidence in the workplace even when you might not always feel it.

It has been helpful for me to keep a running document of the impact I have made on my team and at my organization to better understand why I should be confident about the skills and unique talents I bring to the table. I have also made it a point to voice my ideas and opinions during meetings when I feel they are appropriate and will add value to the conversation. Asking for help is a necessary skill both when you are lacking expertise in a certain area and when you are feeling burned out or cannot handle your workload.

Knowing when and how to ask for help shows strong self-awareness and helps the organization by getting ahead of a possible inefficiency. While having a strong work ethic and being independent are positive qualities, the business should know when to ask for help.

If you know it has been difficult to ask for help in the past, explain why you know it is beneficial and the ways you have tried to improve this skill. I have learned that it is much more beneficial both for me and the business to reach out when I do not understand something or feel burned out with my workload.

I also understand that many experts around me have specific knowledge and skills that can make my work better. While I am still working on it, I have been able to produce more high-quality work as a result of getting help from those around me.

Even the most flexible people can have trouble working with others that have certain characteristics or personality traits. Having good teamwork skills also means having a strong awareness of how you work with others and ways you can adjust your approach to better serve the organization.

If this has been a weakness of yours in the past, explain the personality types you have had trouble working with and quickly identify the reasons why. Then discuss the ways you have adjusted your communication or work style to better work towards a common goal together. While I understand diversity in personalities makes a business strong, I tend to quiet my own ideas and opinions around louder colleagues.

To combat this, I have made it a point to spend more time with colleagues I feel uncomfortable working with. By learning more about them, their communication style and motivations, I am better able to collaborate with these personality types so that we both equally contribute our strengths and skills.

While it is certainly honorable and shows a strong work ethic to spend your time and energy on work, it is also necessary to prioritize resting, going on vacation, spending time with your family and enjoying hobbies.

Doing so can help you feel refreshed when you are at work and can increase motivation, creativity and support a positive outlook.

If this is the weakness you choose to present during your interview, explain the ways you have learned to balance life and work and how you have seen your work improve as a result. In this case, you have a limited amount of time and money available. If you focus your time and money on developing the skills necessary to become a better salesperson, is the benefit greater to you than if you were to spend those resources on developing your accounting skills?

If you evaluate those weaknesses, and decide that improving your sales ability is more important, then what are you supposed to do about that accounting weakness? Instead, improve what you can and bring people alongside you who have strengths that balance out your weaknesses. Entrepreneurs tend to try and do everything by themselves, and quickly burn out. Once they were able to bring in the right people who could do some things better than them, their business was able to become more productive and effective.

Jonathan is the Engagement Marketing Manager for Palo Alto Software, and has spent the last 9 years developing and implementing digital marketing strategies. During that time, he has learned that empathy and authenticity are strengths by which companies can effectively engage with individuals at every point throughout the customer journey.

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Start your plan. By completing this form, I agree that Debut may keep me informed of its products, services and offerings. Take four minutes to set up your profile and have great grad jobs come to you. Login Sign up today. Blog Employability How to identify your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. We get asked all the time about our weaknesses but do you know what yours really are? And how do you go about addressing them? Jessica Murray. Think about your career The first thing to do is to think about what skills you actually need.

Some other questions you might want to ask: What tasks do you leave until last on your to-do list? What drains your energy? When do you have to ask for help? Hard vs.