Hello, and welcome back to another episode of HR Coffee Time with me Fay Wallis, career coach and outplacement specialist with a background in HR. I’m also the founder of Bright Sky Career Coaching. And this is going to be the last in the mini series of episodes, especially about how to succeed in your next job interview. If you’re a regular listener to the show, and you aren’t looking for a new job, you may be thinking, Oh, my goodness, another episode about interviews?

Fay Wallis: 00:00:34

Well, if you are thinking that, please don’t worry, I promise this is the last one in the mini series, I probably will create another mini series at some point next year, because although I know I’ve covered a lot over the last three weeks, of course, there is so much more that I could teach you about interviews. But I will have to save that for another day. Because I know that there will be lots of people listening to the show, who are listening to help them in their current role at the moment, not because they’re looking for a new role.

Fay Wallis: 00:01:04

But if you are looking for a new role, I really hope that you’ve been enjoying the miniseries and that it’s been helping. If you found yourself putting any of the advice into action, please do let me know I would love to hear all about it. You can always reach me on LinkedIn or through my website, Bright Sky Career Coaching. And I’ve got links to both of those in the show notes for you. Anyway, let me tell you what we’re going to be covering in the show today.

Fay Wallis: 00:01:32

So today, I’m going to be focusing on the three main negative interview questions that you need to get ready for if you have an interview coming up. And the reason I decided to focus on this is because I know that negative interview questions are one of the big things that people tend to worry about when it comes to interviews. There are different kinds of negative questions that you can be asked. But the three main types that I see or hear of coming up again and again are what are your weaknesses? Why do you want to leave your job? And the third kind are called failure questions.

Fay Wallis: 00:02:11

So if you listen to last week, that episode was all about competency based interview questions, where you’re asked to talk through an example of when and how you’ve done something before in your career. And although a lot of the time, you’ll be asked positive questions about when something has gone? Well, you can also be asked what are known as failure questions, which are all about when things have gone wrong.

Fay Wallis: 00:02:36

So a failure question can be something like, ‘tell me about a time you failed?’ Or ‘tell me about a time you missed a deadline.’ Any competency that you’re being assessed against, you could be asked a success question, which are always much nicer to answer. Or you can be asked a failure question. Because it can feel daunting to answer any of these questions, whether it’s what are your weaknesses? Why do you want to leave your job or answering a failure question, it can be really easy to just put them off or hope you’re never going to be asked any of these. But the way to do really well in your interview is to prepare for them. So let’s crack on with the show. And I can talk you through how to prepare for them.

Fay Wallis: 00:03:23

So they’re not daunting anymore, and you do a brilliant job in the interview. Let’s start off by looking at how to answer the question, what are your weaknesses? Now there are a few things that I just want to point out to begin with. The first thing is that the interviewers aren’t trying to trip you up, they’re not trying to find out if you’ve got some terrible floor at all, the main thing that they’re actually looking for is to see how self aware you are to see if you do actually take feedback on board, if you can see areas that you struggle with, and that you’re committed to continually improving and working on.

Fay Wallis: 00:04:04

So the worst thing that you can do or say when you’re asked that question is, oh, I don’t have any weaknesses. And that does happen. I’ve had lots of people answer that question to me. So before I embarked on my coaching career before that, I did a lot of internal recruitment in my previous role. And so it meant that as part of that I conducted a lot of interviews. And I can’t tell you the amount of times that people would say, ‘Oh, I don’t really know’ or, I, ‘I don’t think I really have any weaknesses.’ And it’s disappointing as an interviewer to hear that answer because you think, really, you know, none of us is perfect. I would like to think I’m perfect, but I’m definitely not.

Fay Wallis: 00:04:49

Unfortunately, none of us are. The other way you can go wrong is if you actually lean way too much the other way, and do reveal something that actually If you’re terrible at or that you really struggle with, I have seen that happen a couple of times as well. And my heart’s really gone out to the person because I thought, oh, no, you shouldn’t have said that that isn’t going to sound great, especially if the interview has been going really well up to that point. So how often do you approach this question without not saying anything at all? Or going too far the other way?

Fay Wallis: 00:05:26

Or actually, there’s also a third way that you can go wrong with it, which I would say is the most common way people get unstuck, and that they give a fake answer. Well, I’m not sure it’s really a fake answer. It’s a smug answer. It’s really something they see as a strength, or something they see as a positive. And they’re talking about it as if it’s a weakness. So the answer that I have heard the most, or I used to hear the most was, well, I’m just a perfectionist, I can’t really help it, I just hold myself to such a high standard, that I will make sure the work is done perfectly, even if it means I have to stay and work late and other people tell me that I should relax a bit and make sure that I’m always stopping work on time. But for me, it’s just not possible. It’s just who I am.

Fay Wallis: 00:06:18

Now, of course, when you hear an answer like that, it definitely sounds as if someone isn’t taking a potential weakness seriously. So coming back to what is important about your answer, what’s important is showing that you can take on feedback, you can see if you’ve got any blind spots, or any areas that you should be developing, and that you then act on that. And the irony is that if you are a perfectionist, that can be a huge red flag. I’m saying this as a recovering perfectionist.

Fay Wallis: 00:06:53

Because there is a real dark side to perfectionism. My sister’s always saying to me, it’s the thief of joy. Fay is the thief of joy. And I know she will be listening to this because she’s very loyal. She listens every week. So thank you, Holly for constantly reminding me about that. And it isn’t just that it’s the thief of joy, which Holly has definitely writes about. It’s also the fact that it can lead to burnout, it can lead to so many negative things.

Fay Wallis: 00:07:23

So it’s often the perfectionist, the people who are putting their all into work that ended up keeling over at some point because they just can’t sustain those high standards. Or they end up driving their team around the bend, because they have those same expectations of everybody else as well. Or it can be disruptive in other ways as well. But they’re the two main things that come to mind. So I suppose this is just a bit of a gentle warning, really, if you were thinking of saying that, then please don’t. Instead, what’s much better is to identify a weakness, explain the steps you’ve taken to address it, spell out how you know they’ve worked. And then for extra points, if you want to for a fourth step, you can then explain why the weakness won’t negatively impact on this role.

Fay Wallis: 00:08:17

But if you’re listening and thinking, Oh, I’m really not actually sure what a genuine weaknesses that I have, then you’re not alone. And that is absolutely fine. I can help you to pinpoint what it might be. And there are two easy ways to try and figure out what your weaknesses are, if you’re not really sure. Or if the weakness you can talk about feels completely insignificant and not like something you could talk about in an interview. So the first way is to ask for feedback. And depending on how you feel about feedback, that might be an easy thing for you to do. Or it might be a difficult thing for you to do. Because I know a lot of people can be quite fearful of feedback.

Fay Wallis: 00:09:03

If you do decide to go down that route and you want to ask for feedback, then the important thing is to make sure you set the people up you’re asking for that feedback from set them up to know they can tell you the truth. The second way of figuring out what one of your weaknesses might be is to look at what your strengths are. Because often the things that were brilliant arts, I suppose our natural talents, the things that come to us effortlessly our strength. They bring so much to our work our lives and our careers.

Fay Wallis: 00:09:40

But the flip side of strengths is that you can dial them up a bit too much, you can lean into them too much. And when you start to do that, that’s when they can flip into becoming a weakness. So for example, someone who is very committed and very driven very resilient, that can only be seen as a huge strength. If they start dialling it up a bit too much around their team, then again, they might find that they’re pushing their team too hard.

Fay Wallis: 00:10:13

If you’re someone who is absolutely brilliant with processes with organisation, and you start dialling that up a bit too much, or leaning into that strength too much or holding it too tightly, then the flip side of that is that you can find change quite difficult. Because it may be that you’re very used to doing things in a certain way, and you’ve got very good at it. And so you’re resistant of change have different ideas of different ways of changing those processes. If one of your strengths is that you have incredible empathy, and you’re a real go to person within the team or the organisation that you work in, because people know that you will understand and that you’ll try to help them.

Fay Wallis: 00:10:59

Again, if you lean into that strength too much. If you’re not careful to temper it, then the flip side of that when it becomes a weakness is that that can be when you might find you’re working really long hours because you’ve been helping everyone else and not necessarily focusing on your own work. Or you might find that your projects and priorities for yourself, start to slip, because you’re busy taking time out making sure you’re listening to other people making sure that you’re supporting other people.

Fay Wallis: 00:11:30

So there are just a few examples. But of course, that might bring you on to thinking. But I have no idea what are my strengths, sorry, there. And again, there’s some really quick fixes for this. And I would just like to reassure you that you’re not alone, if you don’t know what your strengths are, because most of us don’t. Because the funny thing about strength. And actually, I should clarify what I mean when I talk about strengths. So strengths are are skills that we’re highly developed in that come to us almost effortlessly, and energise us when we use them.

Fay Wallis: 00:12:06

So we really want to be trying to make sure that we have opportunities to use our strengths throughout our careers, because that’s often when we’ll feel the most energised and fulfilled at work. But part of them coming very easily to us means that we often won’t acknowledge they really are strengths, because we don’t realise how hard it is for other people to use those skills or to behave in that way. So it’s probably very likely that if someone said to you, oh, my gosh, you did such a good job with that, or I wish that I could have done that, like you. You’re thinking, what are they talking about? What’s the big deal, though? I don’t really understand what the fuss is all about. That’s easy. And so it means you dismiss it, and you don’t take on board the fact that it’s a strength.

Fay Wallis: 00:12:53

So there are a couple of really good ways of finding out what your strengths are, you’re not going to be surprised to hear me say, Go and ask for feedback or ask people around you what it is that they think you’re really good at. Another way is to take a StrengthsFinder assessment. I think it’s just been renamed Gallup strengths, actually. But if you put in strengths finder.com online, it will come up straightaway, it will reroute you to the new name. Or if you want to order the book about it online, just Google StrengthsFinder 2.0. So 2.0, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes for you. It’s a inexpensive, brilliant assessment that you can take that tells you what your strengths are, it’s my favourite one.

Fay Wallis: 00:13:41

There are a few different ones available. I’ve tried out lots of them. And I always find myself coming back to this one because it does seem incredibly accurate. And I think that knowing your strengths will help you with so many aspects of your interview, especially things like if you’re asked a question about your strengths. One thing to mention about the assessment is that there are different levels you can pay for.

Fay Wallis: 00:14:08

Obviously, if you want to pay to unlock all of your strengths in order, then you can do that. But if you’re listening to this and thinking, Oh, yes, I would like to find out what my strengths are. I actually think that their top five strengths assessment you can take, which is the cheapest one is brilliant. I think that’s enough on its own. And that’s less expensive than the other ones that they offer you. If you buy the book StrengthsFinder 2.0.

Fay Wallis: 00:14:33

And flip to the back there is an access code that lets you take that assessment online, the top five strengths assessment. So I just wanted to make sure I clarify that in case you’re looking at the most expensive version of their assessments thinking oh my goodness, why is Fay recommending something that’s this expensive? It’s still not crazily expensive, but the top five strengths is really reasonably priced, as part of your strengths.

Fay Wallis: 00:14:59

Find a report that your guests who are in the StrengthsFinder book, you’ll see that they also mentioned things to watch out for. So really the things they’re telling you to watch out for are what could be your weaknesses. Once you’ve got clear on what your weaknesses are, or might be, you can then start putting a plan in place to work on them. Because what I found when I’ve spoken to people about this approach, before that, you go into the interview, and you say what your weakness is, what the steps are, that you’ve taken to address it, spelling out how you know, those steps have worked. And then for bonus points, saying how you know that weakness won’t negatively impact this role.

Fay Wallis: 00:15:37

I have had people say to me, Well, I do know that this is a problem. And I know that this is something I struggle with. I know, this is one of my weaknesses, but I’ve just had it my whole life. So I’ve never done anything about it. And I’d just like to reassure you that if that’s how you feel, please don’t worry, you can start putting something into action straightaway. A lot of the time, it doesn’t take very much to be able to balance out those weaknesses.

Fay Wallis: 00:16:07

And I have a real life example of a brilliant answer that someone gave me when I was interviewing them years and years ago. Now, it was so good that it really stayed with me. It was the strongest answer anyone ever gave to this question? What are your weaknesses? Or what is your weakness? And so I’ll read it out for you. I have actually got this on a blog on my website as well. The blog is called How to Answer the interview question, what are your weaknesses? So I’ll make sure that I link to that in the show notes as well. All right, so let’s hear what this person said to me. The first thing so they stated what the weakness was. They said, I used to find it hard to manage my time. Well, I felt like I had a never ending to do list and I’d struggle to hit all of my deadlines, and get back to customers on time.

Fay Wallis: 00:17:01

Step two, where he explained the steps he had taken to address it. To overcome this, I completed an online productivity course and I started listening to time management podcasts. They taught me some simple but really effective techniques that have just transformed my approach. Now my days are far more structured and everything is booked into my Outlook calendar. I’ve got set times of the day for client calls, set times for email follow ups and set times for meetings. I also make sure that I block out time that is dedicated to project work so that other things don’t creep into that time. And I find myself not getting to projects.

Fay Wallis: 00:17:38

Step three was spelling out how they knew that the steps had worked. I know this approach is working well, because I’m hitting my deadlines in advance. And I’ve had positive feedback from three of my key clients. In fact, two of my colleagues recently asked me if I could teach them my time management system, because they’ve seen what a difference it has made. And then the bonus points step, the one that will look fabulous, if you use it in your interview answer is step four, why the weakness won’t negatively impact this role. I realised that this role will have different requirements for my time, and that the company and team will have their own ways of working. But I’m confident that with what I’ve learned, I can flex my approach to fit, I just need to make sure I keep listening to the podcasts and referring back to what I learned on the course.

Fay Wallis: 00:18:26

So I hope that hearing that real life example, helps bring it all to life for you. The other thing to mention is that an obvious weakness is often if you’re applying for a role that’s in a different sector to what you’ve worked in before, or that’s in a completely different industry, or it’s a different role that you might not have done before. Or it’s a role that you’ll be stepping up into so a bit of a promotion or a stretch. In that case, there are obvious weaknesses, the weakness is going to be that you don’t know that sector or industry or that you haven’t done the role before. So there’s lots you can do.

Fay Wallis: 00:19:03

Still thinking about that four step formula that is going to show you’re putting things in place to deal with that weakness. So perhaps you’ve started following competitors on Twitter and going to industry events and networking and talking to people who do that job or signing up for a course or having a mentor, there is so much that you can say you’re doing to address any potential gaps. And all that’s going to do is impress the interviewers because they can see that you’re developing and growing.

Fay Wallis: 00:19:37

Now we’ll move on to the second negative question that you’re likely to be asked or that you might be asked, and that is why do you want to leave your job? Now in the first episode of this series, so two episodes ago, I did talk about what to say if you’ve been made redundant because I know that that’s something that people can worry about. So if actually you’ve left your job and that’s the case So then you might want to hop back those two episodes and have a listen to that one. But if the situation is different, and you want to leave your job for different reasons, my main tips here are to stay upbeat and positive and concise, not so concise that you’re giving them no information at all.

Fay Wallis: 00:20:18

So when I was doing interview coaching with a client, a little earlier in the year, this was something that they were really nervous about answering. And when I said, Okay, well, what would your initial thoughts be about answering the interview, they said, Oh, I just want to say, it’s time for a change. So that is concise.

Fay Wallis: 00:20:38

But you need a tiny bit more detailed than that for it to be enough, really, and where you’re going to be staying upbeat, and positive, and concise, what that means is, you’re not going to be hugely criticising the company or criticising your boss or criticising decisions that they’ve made, even if you do feel critical of them, because you will just come across as negative and resentful. And, of course, that’s not how you want to come across. So even if you’re leaving under very difficult circumstances, or because you can’t stand your boss or someone’s come in, and they’re just making decisions you completely disagree with, there are ways you can talk about that in a positive light.

Fay Wallis: 00:21:20

And the best answers are always truthful ones. Often I find the reason people want to move on is because they’ve got a bit bored or a bit frustrated in a role. So again, we’re not going to say that in a negative way, like, oh, my gosh, it was so boring, there are so frustrating. Instead, you’re going to flip it so that it sounds positive. So it can be I got so much from my time in that organisation. And I know, I’m going to look back on it with really fond memories, I’m going to stay in touch with a lot of my colleagues. But ultimately, I have outgrown the role. And I’m ready for a new challenge. And that’s the perfect lead in for you talking about why the role you’re interviewing for at that moment in time is the perfect one to give you the challenge that you’re looking for.

Fay Wallis: 00:22:08

If you’re finding it hard to find some positives about the organisation that you want to leave, then a good tip is to either sit down and write it all out. So write out all the reasons that you want to leave. But also write down the things that you like about that role, or sit with a friend, if you don’t really like writing and just talk them through it explain what you’re doing, that you’re trying to find a concise and positive story that is truthful around why you’re leaving the organisation that you’re currently at or why you want to leave there. And what you’ll find is that it will probably all come out in a big rush with loads and loads of detail and stuff that isn’t going to be relevant in an interview at all.

Fay Wallis: 00:22:53

But once you have it all out on paper, or once you’ve spoken to your friend about it, you’ll be able to see how you can start to mould and shape it and cut it back. And what you then want to do is trim it back back back back back until hopefully you’re just talking for about a minute, a minute is actually longer than you think. And you’ll have to keep practising it to make sure you’re keeping it to a minute, I’ll let you have a minute and a half or two minutes if you really can’t condense it down that much. But the more you practice it, the sharper it’s going to sound, the better it’s going to sound. And the more confident you’re going to feel saying it in the interview. So that when you’re asked the question, it doesn’t even feel like it’s a negative question because you’re prepared and ready.

Fay Wallis: 00:23:40

That brings us on to the third kind of negative questions, which are failure questions. And if you listen to last week’s episode that was all about competency based interview questions, you’ll know that I really do believe in using the STAR technique to answer your questions. If you haven’t listened to that episode, please do hop back and give it a listen. Because I’ll go into detail around that there. But today for this one, I’m just going to touch on it. The S is for situation, which means that you explain the situation that took place, you’re giving some context for the interviewer so they can easily follow along with your story.

Fay Wallis: 00:24:20

The T is your task because so what your role was in the situation that you’re describing, a is your actions or your activities. So what it is that you did to fulfil your task and are is the result. Now, if you’re talking through the answer for a positive or success question, the offer result is going to be all about how well you did. For example, if you were answering a question about working to a tight deadline, you’d explain that you hit the deadline. Or if you were answering a question about how you diffused a disagreement between two team members, your result would be that you go We’re going to start working together well again.

Fay Wallis: 00:25:03

But if you’re answering a negative question, a failure question, you’re not going to be able to give a lovely, shiny positive result at the end, because the point of a failure question is that you failed. Instead, what you need to do is add something on to the staff formula. And that addition is what you learned from the situation. So for example, if you’re asked about a time that you missed a deadline, you could explain you missed the deadline. So you use the STAR technique to explain all of that.

Fay Wallis: 00:25:37

But you would then add on the fact that because of that happening, you then implemented a new process for your team to follow that has resulted in future deadlines being hit successfully, all the months that have happened since then, just like with the question, what are your weaknesses, the important things to show that you’re committed to learning and to improving that it doesn’t matter. If you don’t always do brilliant at something, your resilience, you can pick yourself up, dust yourself down, analyse what’s gone wrong, fix stuff and move on. That brings us to the end of this mini series of episodes about doing well in interviews.