By Caroline M. Cole
Wanting to gain an edge in interviews, job hunters solicit advice on how to answer the token curve ball questions that recruiters and hiring managers increasingly ask: If you were to eliminate one of the planets, which would it be and why? How many ping-pong balls could fill a train car? If you were to invite three of our competitors to dinner, who would they be? Which kitchen utensil describes you best? How many people in New York City are logged into LinkedIn at 4:30p.m. on Friday? Yet one question continues to stump prospective employees who are trying to sell their talents and abilities: What are your weaknesses?
Job applicants often think it’s a trick question, goading them to offer information the company could use to disqualify their candidacy. As such, they look through interview guides, conduct Google searches, and talk with career counselors to find the “correct” response to this question and its variations, only to discover a range of possibilities.
Well-meaning friends and career consultants might encourage interviewees to focus on skills that are not important for the work the candidate aims to do; for example, a candidate might discuss computation as a weakness when applying for positions that stress soft skills. Others suggest candidates offer up presumed weaknesses that are actually strengths in disguise, like “I’m a perfectionist,” suggesting the candidate has little tolerance for sloppy work. “In my eagerness to secure new clients, I have stepped on people’s toes,” could also serve some candidates well in light of the fact that companies may be hesitant to turn away applicants who are willing to pursue business.
Some advise candidates to use their alleged weaknesses as opportunities to discuss areas of improvements, such as “Because I’ve struggled to find the balance between work and play, I’ve been strengthening my time management abilities,” while others propose that candidates make their weaknesses context specific; for example, “I have difficulties working in offices with undefined reporting structures, prompting me to look for a position where there would be more explicit guidance and mentorship opportunities.”
In its myriad forms, the question asking candidates to talk about their weaknesses can give companies a heads-up about prospective employees, but there is something compelling about this question that all of us—regardless of our employment prospects or desires—can learn, as evident in the comments that Sunny Gupta, the cofounder, President and C.E.O. of Apptio, made to New York Times “Corner Office” columnist Adam Bryant.
When asked how he hires, Gupta replies that a favorite interview topic is “asking people about the three to four things they need to work on, or the things they are just not good at,” adding that he’ll “ask that question three to four times from different angles until [he is] satisfied with the answer.” Like other recruiters, Gupta seems to use the question to gauge a candidate’s self-awareness and where the company would need to fill in the gaps; if applicants “cannot internalize the things they need to work on,” he observes, they’ll “need too much patting on the back.” He goes on to explain, however, that this question also offers insight into how the candidate might align with the “glass half-empty” management style that drives his company. After all, recognizing that most things in a business may be working on any given day, Gupta says he’s more concerned with the areas that are not working, where the glass is not at maximum capacity, because, he says, “that’s how you become great.”
Several business managers use the adage that their companies are only as strong as their weakest link, perhaps explaining their interest in the ways prospective candidates discuss their weaknesses. Yet rather than simply recognizing that weak links exist, we might all do well to identify the half-empty glasses in our professional and personal lives and to focus on filling those glasses so that we, too, can become great.
Consider, for example, Benjamin Franklin’s “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.” In his autobiography, Franklin explains that awareness and interest alone are insufficient for improving the deficiencies we see in our lives; we must be proactive in developing alternative behaviors. Therefore, he devised a system that would help him purposefully and strategically acquire the habits of thirteen moral virtues he thought worthy to obtain:
1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Using this list, Franklin proposed to focus on one virtue at a time and, once he mastered that virtue, he would move on to another, and so on, until he acquired all of the characteristics on his list. To help in this effort, he gave “a week’s strict attention to each of the virtues successively…leaving the other virtues to their ordinary chance” and tracked his progress in a book in which he would “mark, by a little black spot, every fault [he] found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue.” At the end of the thirteen weeks, he would repeat the exercise, actively working to keep the pages “clean of spots.”
Running through “this plan for self-examination” four times a year, Franklin writes “I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined.” As such, Franklin wasn’t able to master all of these virtues as he set out to do. He was, in his words, “incorrigible with respect to Order,” despite seeing substantial benefit to its practice in his later years; he also writes he did not have much success in his acquisition of humility. Nevertheless, by seeing the glass half-full in areas he thought important to develop, Franklin became more of the person he aspired to be: “tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor…better and happier…than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”
As Franklin demonstrates, self-assessment and self-improvement should be goals for everyone—not just eager job applicants wanting to make a good impression—because the ways we think, act, and engage with others reveal more about who we are than anything we might say. Therefore, in addition to identifying the areas in which we are successful (see “Document—and Celebrate—Your Contributions in the Sweet Spot”), we should register the areas we could improve and work to address those areas with greater purpose and consistency.
In taking such inventory, we may discover that many of our professional and personal behaviors are sufficient, or even better than sufficient, as validated by what we have accomplished, by what others have said about us, or by what we see when comparing ourselves to those around us. Even so, we should resist propensity toward “cumulative advantage” (which suggests that something beginning with a favorable impression will build upon that popularity, regardless of original or ongoing quality) and remain cognizant of the potential effects of behavioral contagion—ideas that come together in the work of Sinan Aral, assistant professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Drawing upon his research of social contagion (that is, how information is diffused in social media forums, thereby affecting employee productivity, consumer demand, and viral marketing), Aral explains that human behavior clusters in network space and time, developing the potential to influence an individual’s choice in various forums. Behavioral contagions, for example, can affect an individual’s product preferences, social interests, health practices, political views, career directions, work behavior, and so on—perhaps irrespective of the quality of a given option. In addition to helping businesses become more strategic in selling their products and services, Aral suggests that understanding how behaviors travel and where they will go next may have the potential to help us promote socially advantageous behavior and contain less desirable ones.
The work in and possibilities for behavior contagion research continues to grow, yet it is the inclination of how one person may be spontaneously and uncritically copying others that is relevant to this discussion of self-improvement.
Herd mentality can motivate and encourage behaviors that push us to become better and stronger than we might otherwise become on our own, as evident in healthy competition. Following the crowd, however, can also lead us on paths that do not have our best selves in mind—certainly by encouraging us toward behaviors that may not reflect our values, but also by allowing us to remain content as a lesser version of our ideal self. Although Aral’s proposal that we may be able to promote or discourage socially advantageous behaviors could help mitigate these concerns, it also raises questions as to who (or what) will determine which behaviors to support, which behaviors to deter, and for whose benefit. Here, then, is why proactive self-development can be invaluable.
We may not be angling for a job offer, but by establishing the habit of asking “What are our weaknesses?” we can choose which characteristics and behaviors we would like to develop in light of the person we aspire to be. And by actively filling the half-empty glasses we want to fill, we can move closer to that ideal and, in the process, toward greatness.
Working toward Areté…
To identify and track areas for improvement, download the “Using the ‘What Are Your Weaknesses?’ Question to Advantage” .pdf or let us know your system for strengthening aspects of your professional and personal life in the space below.
