How to Choose a Good Weakness?

1. Choose a weakness that is appropriate for the work at hand – You may highlight abilities that are not required for the position. Don’t bring up a shortcoming linked to the job you’re applying for. If you’re seeking a job as a software developer, don’t mention that you despise coding.

2. Choose a modest and easily remediable weakness- A weakness that is easily mended with basic motivation. Your weakness should be one that you may potentially improve with personal effort. If you are applying for a Backend developer job, you can say, “I am not familiar with front-end development. Instead, I focus mainly on new tools related to back-end development because I’m interested in back-end development.”

3. Choose those skills that you’ve done improvement in. So when they ask you about weaknesses, you can say – Assume, you are applying for a Software Developer job and this position doesn’t require interaction with clients. You can say – “Conducting group presentations was one of the skills I worked on in the past. As a software engineer, I always write code and have one-on-one contacts. I thought it could help me enhance my presentation abilities. So I attended soft skills training and worked on my presenting abilities. It was quite useful in presenting a product to clients.”

When you go for an interview in a product or service-based company for an SDE role or any role for it matter, the interviewer will try to haze you as much as he/she wants just to know about your personal and professional background, experience, and your personality. This is where you should play a fair game. Interviewers will ask you about your strengths and weaknesses to gauge your ability to tackle the challenges. So, how do you manage to answer this tricky question without looking as imperfect and turning around your weakness into your strength?