Strengths and weaknesses: how to answer the interview question

The question tests three things at once. Do your strengths match what the job needs? Do you know yourself well enough to name a weakness? And do you do something about it? A candidate who can answer all three calmly comes across as self-aware and easy to manage, which is often what separates two people with the same experience.

It comes in many forms: ‘What are your main strengths?’, ‘What's your greatest weakness?’, ‘What would your manager say you could improve?’, ‘Give me three words that describe you’, or ‘What are your five strengths and five weaknesses?’. The method below works for all of them.

Most people struggle with this question because they've never written their strengths and weaknesses down. Spend half an hour on it before the interview:

1. Look back at experiences. The University of Edinburgh's Reflection Toolkit suggests picking something that went really well (for strengths) or poorly (for weaknesses), at work, at university or at home, and asking what you did that made the difference.
2. Ask someone you trust. A colleague, manager or friend can name strengths you take for granted. Their view is an opinion, not a verdict: think about whether you agree.
3. Reread old appraisals and feedback. The same comment twice is a pattern.
4. Take a free skills assessment. The National Careers Service's ‘Discover your skills and careers’ has 40 multiple-choice questions and takes 5 to 10 minutes.
5. Match the list to the job description. Keep the strengths it asks for. For the weakness, pick one that the job doesn't depend on.

The National Careers Service advises planning your answer around two or three examples relevant to the job, backed up by qualifications or training if you have them. A strength without evidence is just an adjective: ‘I'm organised’ means little; ‘I run the rota for 14 staff and haven't had a gap in a shift this year’ is a strength.

Strengths UK employers often look for:

• Communication: explaining things clearly, listening, writing well.
• Teamwork: getting on with people, sharing the load, supporting colleagues.
• Problem solving: finding the cause, not only the quick fix.
• Organisation: planning, prioritising, meeting deadlines.
• Adaptability: coping well with change and new ways of working.
• Attention to detail: accurate figures, careful checks, few errors.
• Customer focus: patience, empathy, putting things right.
• Reliability: turning up, following through, owning your work.
• Initiative: spotting what needs doing without being asked.
• Resilience: staying calm under pressure and recovering from setbacks.

Structure: name the strength, give a short example (the STAR method works well), then link it to the job you're applying for.

Be honest, the National Careers Service says, and explain how you're working to improve. A good answer has three parts: the weakness, a moment when it showed, and what you now do about it. Keep the first part short and the last part concrete.

• Don't give a strength in disguise (‘I'm a perfectionist’, ‘I work too hard’): interviewers have heard it many times.
• Don't say you have no weaknesses.
• Don't name a weakness at the heart of the job, such as poor attention to detail for an accounts assistant.
• Don't blame others, and avoid words like ‘failure’ that stay with the panel longer than your improvement plan.

Some employers, the Civil Service among them, run strengths-based interviews, or mix strengths questions into a competency interview. These questions are different: ‘What do you enjoy doing?’, ‘What kind of task gives you energy?’, ‘When do you do your best work?’. They look for what you do well and enjoy.

The Civil Service's Success Profiles guidance defines a strength by three elements: performance (you do it to a high level), engagement (it motivates you) and use (you do it often). It lists 36 strengths, from ‘Adaptable’ and ‘Analytical’ to ‘Team player’ and ‘Visionary’, and is clear that there are no right or wrong answers. It also asks candidates not to rehearse, because the panel wants your first response. The best preparation is to reflect on your strengths and your preferred ways of working.

So the advice changes: for a strengths question, answer quickly and honestly, with a short example. For a direct ‘What's your weakness?’ question, the method above still applies. Our guide to Civil Service behaviours explains how strengths fit with the rest of Success Profiles.

This answer should take about a minute: one strength with its example, one weakness with its fix. Say it out loud a few times so it sounds natural rather than learned. Our guide on how to prepare for an interview covers the other questions to rehearse, and a mock interview lets you try them on the real job advert.