What is Your Weakness?

Last week a global financial services firm visited The Career Center to conduct interviews with Hofstra students. I had the opportunity to meet with the recruiters afterwards to “de-brief” and find out how the students did.

For each of the students, the weakness was, well, the weakness question.  In most interviews, you will be asked some form of this question.  It could be phrased in several ways, including:

“What are your biggest weaknesses?”

or

“What are some areas in which you would like to improve?”

I will let you in on an interviewing secret. The point of this question is usually not to find out the weakness itself, but to ascertain what you are doing to OVERCOME what you perceive to be a problem area for you.  It’s really designed to learn about your ability to solve a problem.

For example, if I said during an interview that my weakness is that I am afraid of public speaking, the interviewer would be looking for me to follow that with an explanation of how I am trying to overcome that fear.  An appropriate answer might be “My weakness tends to be my fear of public speaking. However, I am currently taking a public speaking class at Hofstra and I can see positive results already!”

Effectively answering this question requires some introspection.  Write down three areas that you feel are weaknesses and then think about ways to overcome them.  Then implement those solutions!

Of course, the best way to prepare for this or any interview question is to make an appointment for a mock interview in The Career Center. Give us a call at 463-6060.  We would be happy to help you ace your next interview!

Taking a Weakness and Making it Into a Strength!

I don't consider myself the creative type. I find that I struggle with coming up with new, innovative ideas sometimes. I have artistic abilities, but that doesn't always necessarily lead to creativity. I find my strengths to lie in support and implementation, and not so much on the "start-from-nothing-and-get-creative-type".

Do I consider that a weakness of mine? Yes.
Is that something I have made strides to work on? Definitely!

Recently, I had the opportunity to work on my creative skills and make something my own. Thanks to Deanna Rodin (the Career Center Associate Director) I was able to take over our recent #HUInternSelfie Challenge and make it my very own. I worked with Deanna and brainstormed a ton of ideas (from very practical to wild and outrageous--think riding an elephant) to use throughout the entire process. This included ways to advertise and get the challenge out there, how to logistically manage the event, which platform was optimal to host the challenge, what challenges would students participate each week, what can we use for the future, and what would be some of the post-event activities with our winner. Although I worked within certain guidelines, it really was a great opportunity to make an event completely my own and have fun with it! I also learned a lot along the way about the process of putting on event and how things work on the Hofstra campus. In the end, I felt we had a great participation (of 10 diverse student interns) and I'm truly proud of the end product (and excited for our winner of the $250 Nordstrom Gift Card!).

Overall, I view weaknesses as future strengths that haven't been worked on yet. The steps I took to work on this particular weakness were:

• Admit to myself and to another person that this is a quality I want to work on. This made me accountable to actually take the steps towards improvement.
• Find an opportunity to work said-quality, big or small. This will give you the freedom and space to work on that skill--remember, practice does make perfect!
• Have fun with it! Not succeeding doesn't always mean failure, this could be one of your first attempts at working on this quality. Give yourself the space to have fun and you'll continue progressing in the future.

With the support of the Career Center staff, I felt encouraged to continue moving forward with my creativity and come up with a fun event, and I hope participants enjoyed it too! If you have a weakness you want to work on, the Career Center is here to support you make it into a strength! Maybe communication isn't your forte and you have a big interview coming up--we'll practice with a mock interview to transform it into a strength. Maybe you're writing skill isn't where you want it to be and you're struggling with a cover letter--the Career Center is here to help you through that process too! All you have to do is reach out and we'll be here!

Anne Monique Concepcion,
Graduate Assistant