In this concise, conversational video, Natalie Fisher tackles the dreaded interview question “What are your weaknesses?” She first challenges the conventional notion of a weakness, arguing that any skill you haven’t yet mastered is simply a learning opportunity rather than a flaw. From that premise, she outlines three practical ways to respond: (1) define a weakness but immediately pivot to how you focus on strengths and continuous learning; (2) share a concrete story of a past shortcoming—such as a fear of public speaking—that you overcame through effort; and (3) demonstrate courage by describing a situation where you faced a fear head‑on. Throughout, she stresses that focusing on strengths leads to greater success and that obsessively trying to improve every weakness can dilute expertise. The video ends with a personal branding plug for NatalieFisher.ca and a light‑hearted puppy cameo, reinforcing her informal, encouraging tone.
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Hi, this is Natalie, and in this video you're going to learn how to answer the question, what are your weaknesses, in a job interview. So stay tuned. First of all, I'd like you to think about what a weakness is really. I mean, is a weakness anything you don't know how to do? If so, everybody has tons of weaknesses. That could be anything from all the musical instruments that you don't know how to play, or all the dead languages that you don't know how to speak. Everybody has a ton of weaknesses, including the person sitting at the other side of the table from you. So why are they asking you that? Why do they want to know what you're bad at? And how can you answer it without hurting your chances at the job? So there are a few ways that you can do this. One is to give an example because maybe there was a time in your life when you needed to overcome something in order to achieve something that was really important to you. So for example, a presentation. Say you needed to do a presentation but you were really, really afraid of public speaking and you did it anyway. You figured out how to— if public speaking is not your thing but you've done it before, then that's a good example of a weakness. For the record, I don't believe in weaknesses. I think that there are things that we are good at and things that we haven't learned how to do yet. There's several things in my life that I would consider have been my weaknesses, and now I know how to do them and I'm fine with them. For example, learning how to use any kind of software program. If you didn't know how to use it in the beginning, then it would be considered a weakness, but If you learned it, then it could potentially be considered a strength or a skill. It's all in how we frame this question. So if we don't really believe we have weaknesses, then we are just going to be learning what we need to learn to do our jobs. Because everybody has things they haven't learned how to do yet, and once they learn them, then they're no longer weaknesses. Thanks for watching. This is Natalie Fisher from NatalieFisher.ca. Be who you are and love what you do. Or love what you do and be who you are. Same thing. Join me back at NatalieFisher.ca, sign up for email updates, and stay in the know about what's going on. Thanks so much. Stay down, Squidgy. Stay down. You're not allowed to be in the video. You're not allowed to be in— okay, fine. Hey everyone, this is Squidgy. She's a puppy. Say hi! Say hi! She's real, I swear. She moves. She actually moves. No, I messed it up. I need a puppy. Why weaknesses are bogus and why you'll learn what you need to learn to do your job, but if you don't need to learn it, then it's probably a waste of your time because people focus on their strengths. People who focus on their strengths are more successful in life. That's just how it is. And people who focus all their time on learning, learning what they don't know how to do, well, they're not gonna specialize or be good at any one thing because they're gonna be learning about everything. So there's your 3 ways. One, explain what a weakness is and why you believe you don't need to learn everything that you're bad at, and you focus on what good at, and that's cool. 2, give a good example of something that you did before that you weren't good at in the beginning and you succeeded at later on because you learned. 3, show them exactly how you were able to do something that you were deathly afraid of, but you did it anyway, and that shows pretty good courage on your part and shows you that you're not afraid to take on a challenge. So Weaknesses are stupid. We— they're all in our head, in my opinion. We either have them, but we just tell ourselves we have them, and that's basically it.
