During a job interview, every employer will have a list of general questions that candidates have to answer. The common ones include questions about one’s greatest strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, career goals etc. Although these questions may come across as common to you, as a candidate you need to be aware that interviewers take answers to these questions quite seriously when it comes to finally picking a candidate.

What interviewers often do is compare answers to these questions and see how different candidates answered the questions, what they are essentially looking for while doing this is how different everyone’s answer is.

One common question that interviewer’s often like to focus on is someone’s weaknesses. They don’t necessarily need to know all your weaknesses; they want to know how you talk about them and how frank and truthful you are about them.

This helps them to shortlist candidates on the basis of their honesty and self pride. It avoids picking people who boast about themselves.

Before you head out for your interview, you should always remember that every interviewer would ask questions based on weaknesses and you shouldn’t shy away from answering it. Be frank and honest during your interview and include a high level of maturity to your answer. For instance, do not talk about your fear of spiders as a weakness.

Here below are a few points that can help you answer questions based on your weakness during an interview effectively:

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Be diplomatic in your answers

When asked about your weakness, be diplomatic in your answers. Your prospective employer does not need to know all about your weakness in detail, even if they know about it in brief, it is more than enough. Be diplomatic to the extent that you treat your weakness as part of you and make sure it doesn’t affect your overall answer.

Say it briefly

As a person, you are bound to have more than one weakness. It is therefore essential to mention them briefly to the prospective employer, not as a conversation. You need to finish answering a question based on your weakness as soon as you can otherwise you will make the employer focus on your weakness unnecessarily.

Make comparisons with accomplished personalities

It is always a good idea to make comparisons with well known people who had similar weaknesses as you. For instance, if you are bad at math, then give examples of other great and accomplished people who were bad at math too but still made a name for themselves in spite of it.

Make comparisons with your own strengths

The point should always be to answer questions based on your weakness smartly; one way to do that is to draw comparisons between your weakness and your strength. For example, if you have average communication skills, add that you are great with computers to make up for it.

Talk about how you try to deal with your weakness

Every employer looks for a candidate who is willing to go the extra mile to improve themselves. It is therefore a good idea to talk about your weakness and how or what you do to improve yourself. For instance, when you say you aren’t comfortable with using Ms Office (which is a basic must for most jobs these days), talk about how you started extra classes every evening to improve yourself on the software. This will help employers feel that you are the kind of person who is willing to try even if you have a problem.

Show the interviewer how the weakness have made you perfect

Sometimes, a person’s weakness is what makes them who they are and what makes them strong. So in the real sense, if your weaknesses have helped shape you then you need to show that to the interviewer so that they are not taken aback by your weakness at all.

Tell them you are a wholesome person in spite of your weakness

As long as the interviewer is convinced that you are a wholesome person, your weaknesses aren’t going to matter to them. So try to portray your weaknesses accordingly so that it doesn’t affect their thought / decision to hire you.

In spite of all the points, always remember that you need to portray the best of you to your interviewer. So whatever the question put across to you, you need to be smart enough to answer it the way that gives the best impression of you, read up about handling interviews before you go for one if you aren’t sure of things. There are always books available, always friends to guide you, so use their help so that you can safely ace the interviews that you have to go for.

Always remember that – its about facing the challenge of grabbing the job offer full on.