• What are weaknesses or areas for improvement? How are you addressing them?
• What are your weaknesses?

1. I tend to focus too much on fully completing tasks to the best of my ability, so my time management can suffer as a result. I sometimes spend too long on improving things, while losing track of the overall aim.
2. I find it nerve racking to face new situations of responsibility that I haven’t met before or feel I’m not qualified for, experienced at or know enough about. Like making impromptu speeches in front of my bosses and large crowds of students, or being put in charge of things I don’t fully understand.
3. It’s important to me to be liked and to be loyal. However too much of this sort of attitude can lead to problems making important decisions. Like which students should fail or not.

Being aware of and acknowledging my weaknesses is a large part of dealing with them. Watching for situations when they occur is important and proceeding calmly and not getting emotionally attached or bothered by a situation. I was very anxious about this interview, but I used the energy from that to prepare more, and not let it distract me from pursuing my aims.

• What is your biggest weakness? (Version 1)

Situation

I tend to focus too much on fully completing tasks to the best of my ability, so my time management can suffer as a result. I sometimes spend too long on improving things, while losing track of the overall aim.

Task

I had a 3 person software development project at university which was in 3 sections, one section each, and three stages of development, to be integrated and tested on completion of each stage. An aim was to learn that staging and integration testing are a good idea as the project progress, in order to guarantee some level of completion.

Action

The situation however was that I and one other shared this characteristic and started developing to the final specifications, which would bypass the first two stages while also being used as solutions for the first two stages, ignoring the aims. When it got nearer the deadline, individually our sections worked, and could be proven by the testing we’d done ourselves.

Result

However the result was when it came to integration, it turned out that we couldn’t get them to work together. Which when we demonstrated it to the assessor, looked really bad, as we couldn’t get the program to compile. However we then showed the testing we had done, and could prove that each section worked, and we were somewhat redeemed.

I learnt that going for the end result without consideration of the process can be a bad strategy. We were too ambitious and too sure of ourselves to believe that we could complete it without the earlier stages as planned. Since then I’ve been more aware of setting smaller more achievable aims that don’t run the risk of failing completely in the way that this did, and is a point that I need to remember.

• What is your biggest weakness? (Version 2)

Situation – I find it nerve racking to face new situations of responsibility that feel I’m not qualified for, experienced at or know enough about. Such as teaching large classes of 100 students, or doing impromptu speeches in front of my bosses, or being put in charge of things that I don’t totally understand. It makes me feel that I’m going to fail and not satisfy the duty that I’ve been charged with.

Task – I see that this is just a normal part of work, and these sorts of tasks need to be handled with calm and responsibility. When I’ve had issues, I raise them, and face the situation under control, regardless of my emotional state.

Action – I’ve deliberately accepted tasks which put me into situations which push me, and I find them stressful but worthwhile. I’m less worried the next time that sort of thing comes again.

Result – I’m more confident about my own abilities, I can use the energy to drive me to learn new things, and is good practise for remaining calm under pressure.