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Most IT professionals dread being asked about their weaknesses in interviews for IT jobs.  It’s often far more difficult to answer these questions, even if your IT recruiters and IT staffing companies have helped you prep for it.  Many technical recruiters and IT recruiting agencies have seen people give a lot of bad answers to this question because there’s some bad advice about it.  Specifically, if you want to really make your IT recruiting firms, IT staffing agencies and interviewers cringe, list a thinly veiled strength as a weakness (ie say your biggest weakness is that you’re a perfectionist, a workaholic, etc).

Why shouldn’t you answer weakness questions this way in interviews?  Firstly, giving an answer like this makes you seem unprofessional and ill prepared.  Many IT professionals have heard this bad advice before.  However, the well-prepared, experienced ones know enough not to answer weakness questions with a strength.  Secondly, giving a strength and trying to disguise it as a weakness doesn’t help your interviewer.  They genuinely want to know about you as an employee.  If you obstruct that process, you’re probably going to turn them off, if not completely ruin your chances of getting the job.  Lastly, you’ll miss a chance to add effectively to your candidacy.  Answer the weakness question with a real weakness that you can demonstrate you’re working on, one that wouldn’t impair your ability to do the job well.  Through your perseverance and problem-solving strategies, you could really impress your interviewers, IT recruiting companies and IT staffing firms!