How to Answer the Greatest Weakness Interview Question and Prove You’re a Real Human

The greatest weakness interview question might seem like a strange one to revisit.

This site covered the core interview questions years ago, so what could possibly be “new”?

The short answer is that behavioral questions have become more important over time because:

• First, banks tried to “automate” the interview process with tools like HireVue that are just depressing.
• Then, AI tools and chatbots made it even easier to sound like a robot answering these questions (and it was already pretty bad before this due to students reading from scripts and online answers).
• So, banks may increasingly go “analog” to assess candidates, which makes it a competitive advantage to sound/appear like a human.

You could potentially memorize your way to success with technical questions, but this is much harder with the “greatest weakness” question because it’s unique to you.

Yes, many people pick the same weakness(es), but you need to back it up with something specific to your work experience.

And if the interviewer wants to go into more detail on anything, you won’t have a chance in a live, 1-on-1 setting unless you’ve thought it through quite well.

I’ll start by summarizing the most common advice, explain how I would approach this question differently, and then give you a specific example of how you can pick a “greatest weakness” and present it in an interview:

What Every Other Article is Saying About the Greatest Weakness Interview Question

Various articles, influencers, and cringeworthy AI slop seem to recommend these points, at least for investment banking interviews:

1. Pick a weakness that is “real but not too real,” such as something that is not critical for Analyst-level roles. For example, you can say you have trouble delegating tasks or making decisions quickly, but you should never say you have poor attention to detail or can’t work long hours.
2. Give a specific example of how this weakness came up in one of your internships, activities, or full-time jobs.
3. Explain how you are working to fix it, such as by forcing yourself to delegate more tasks in team projects or creating decision-making deadlines (in the examples above).

So, what’s wrong with this advice?

First, it doesn’t explain how to pick an appropriate “greatest weakness.”

Instead, it implies that you should look at a list of weaknesses and pick one, maybe by throwing a dart or spinning a magic wheel.

Second, I don’t think the presentation is ideal because it doesn’t sound natural to state all three points upfront.

It’s normally better to focus on the actual weakness or the weakness + a supporting example and then leave it to the interviewer if they want more details.

How to Brainstorm Your Greatest Weakness

Instead of scanning a list of “potential weaknesses,” we think it’s best to start with your work experience and activities.

Go through each one, note your projects/tasks, and write down the positive and negative feedback you received.

If you didn’t get specific feedback, you can also think about positive and negative outcomes, such as whether you won or lost a competition.

Then, use the negative feedback or outcomes to develop your weakness.

You should have three potential weaknesses in mind, but it’s fine to focus on just one in your preparation.

Some common advice still applies; for example, don’t pick a deal-breaking weakness (not good with numbers, poor attention to detail, can’t work long hours, etc.).

Also, cliché answers and non-answers (“I work too hard!” or “I’m too much of a perfectionist”) are bad, as are personality-based weaknesses (“I’m too shy”) and ones that you cannot possibly improve (“I’m not a native English speaker” or “I go to a non-target school”).

You ideally want something specific, skill-based, fixable/improvable, and relevant-but-not-deal-breaking for the role.

Finding Your Greatest Weakness in the Haystack of Your Work Experience

Let’s say that your resume currently has 3 main entries: A stock-pitch competition for a student endowment fund, a search fund internship, and a wealth management internship.

Your projects, feedback, and outcomes look like this:

Student Endowment Fund: You pitched Nike as a “Short” and contributed to a few other groups’ pitches.

• Positives: You finished on time and presented your idea clearly, with solid numbers and research backing up everything. Nike fell by 50% right after your pitch.
• Negatives: You didn’t go “above and beyond” to the same extent the other students did (e.g., by doing on-the-ground observation at retailers), and your idea was standard and not very creative, so you did not place well in the competition.

Search Fund Internship: You helped with company outreach, screening, and quick financial reviews.

• Positives: You did well with all the quantitative and modeling tasks, and you even automated some of the processes to save time with initial screens and due diligence.
• Negatives: The search fund entrepreneur didn’t follow most of your recommendations because he felt you didn’t have a great sense of companies’ qualitative strengths and weaknesses, or what made them investable (e.g., how much “key person risk” there was).

Wealth Management Internship: All the standard tasks, such as preparing client materials, helping with outreach, and reviewing/maintaining client portfolios.

• Positives: You did well answering client questions and tweaking client portfolios to better match their goals and risk tolerance.
• Negatives: Your follow-up efforts were inconsistent, and you had to be reminded of various tasks after the initial contact. They said you were strong technically but less skilled on the relationship side.

Technically, any of these weaknesses could work.

However, I would probably pick Weakness #1 about “not going above and beyond” for use in an IB interview.

If you’re an intern or new hire in IB, bankers mostly want you to keep your head down, avoid mistakes, and make their lives easier.

Not going the extra mile on projects can sometimes be an issue, but it’s more of a problem for senior bankers and buy-side jobs.

Weakness #2 about qualitative analysis of companies is arguably a bit “too real.”

Yes, IB is a sell-side role, but you still need to understand a company’s “investable” qualities because they come up in pitch books, CIMs, and sales team memos.

Weakness #3 about follow-up and relationship development is probably the next-best one to pick if you want to be prepared with two answers.

These skills are much more important at the senior levels in IB and when you’re networking, but they’re less of a factor on the job.

The Greatest Weakness Interview Question: How to Present Your Answer

I would recommend giving a short description and a simple example to back it up, aiming for a maximum of 30 seconds (~75 words) in your initial response:

“In projects, I focus on efficiency and accuracy rather than being creative or going above and beyond the requirements. For example, in one stock-pitch competition at my student endowment fund, I presented a “Short Nike” pitch, and they liked the reasoning and analysis but said the idea was unoriginal and didn’t show evidence of going beyond online research, so I didn’t place well.”

At this point, you could pause and ask if they want more details.

If they do, you could then walk through your valuation and explain how your pitch was correct, but not quite what the judges were looking for in this competition.

I think it sounds unnatural to immediately explain what you’re doing to “improve,” and it will probably make your answer longer than 30 seconds.

But if the interviewer asks about it, you could cite a later task or activity where you forced yourself to be more creative or do something unexpected.

It’s worth preparing this explanation, but you don’t necessarily want to give it in your initial response.

If the interviewer likes your answers, they might move into other topics.

If they don’t buy your weakness or want to enter “bad cop” mode, they might ask you to name another weakness, which is why it’s good to have at least two prepared.

Variations and Other Questions to Expect

You won’t always get the exact “What’s your greatest weakness?” question. Variations include:

• “What are your top 3 weaknesses?”
• “What are your 3 greatest weaknesses? I know the first 2 will be BS, so give me 3.”
• “What would your friends say about you?” (Strengths and weaknesses)
• “What flaw do you have that could hurt your ability to do this job?”

You can prepare for most of these by reviewing negative feedback/results from your previous experience.

The last variation might come up if you cite something that’s not especially relevant to investment banking, such as poor public speaking skills.

If this happens, you can switch to something like Weakness #2 above about not understanding companies’ qualitative strengths/weaknesses that well.

But since the interviewer asked about this job, you should also point out explicitly that this could be a problem in a credit deal or IPO when you must outline all the risk factors.

In my experience, if you state a real weakness and support it, most interviewers aren’t very curious to learn more or ask “gotcha” questions.

They tend to press you when your initial response is weak or shows that you don’t understand the job.

Your Greatest Weakness in the Comments

If you’re not sure about your greatest weakness and want quick feedback, leave a comment below, and I’ll respond.

Ground Rules: Please do not ask about something already addressed in this article, such as one of the clearly bad/inappropriate examples.

Also, please do not ask about something you saw in a generic “weakness” list or AI-generated output.

Any weakness you ask about should be based directly on your work/activities, or you’ve missed the point of this article.