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Today our topic is how to answer the question: What is your greatest weakness ?

A couple of topics we're gonna be covering are: Why this question gets asked ?; Why does this question get asked ?; We're gonna be talking about the things you should never say, and we're gonna be going over a sample answer.

There are four things that this question is trying to uncover, the first is: do you have self-awareness, are you open and honest, do you have a healthy dose of self-awareness, do you have the skill set to do the job, are you the type of person that pursues growth opportunities ?

There are a couple of answers that you always want to stay away from and they often get said in interviews. When asked what are your weaknesses people tend to say: I work too hard, or I've never really thought about it before. That's a real red flag and the best one is: I don't have any weaknesses. That person is not getting a callback.

You can use this type of example: I tend to have trouble saying no to requests from leadership because I'm a people pleaser, this leads me to take on more than I can handle and get burnt out quickly. To help myself improve in this area, I read a handful of books, most notably Essentialism by Greg McGowan. He breaks down systematic discipline for discerning how to prioritize essential things.

There's a script that you can use in creating your answer, my greatest weakness is that x, this leads me to or has made me appear x to help me improve this area I focused on x and y actions, now when I'm faced with this situation the result is x. That's it pretty simple, just got to practice a little bit and be confident in the answers that you provide.