Medicine Interview Questions - How to answer "What's your biggest weakness?"

hey guys welcome back to the channel if you new here my name is Ali I'm a final year medical student at Cambridge University absolutely lovely to see today we're gonna be talking about how to answer the common interview question of what is your biggest weakness and I know this is a question that feels a lot of people would dread because there's a bit of uncertainty about whether you talk about a weakness and then turn into a strength or whether you're actually honest about your weaknesses or whether you say you're a perfectionist so hopefully by the end of this video you'll have a better idea about how to answer that question to that end we'll be hearing from six different medical students who are offering their own perspective on how to answer the question and then we'll have a segment of myself and my friend Kenny actually answering the question as if we would in an actual interview so you have an idea of what an answer might look like but the biggest thing to say is kind of like with all of these videos and any kind of book that you read about interview preparation is that there really isn't a right or wrong answer the right answer just depends on what you think your biggest weakness is you can pretty much say anything and I think a good formula to follow is that pick something that actually is a weakness for you but then talk about how you're improving on it and I think that's probably the formula that most people follow when answering this question and then you just kind of customize it personalize it make it your own answer and hopefully deliver it in a nice way with like smiling and you know just kind of try and be engaging with the answer and you'll be absolutely fine this question isn't really something to worry about but it is something you want to be thinking about in advance of the interview so that you're not completely thrown by it if it comes your way now we're going to hear from six medical students who are offering their own different perspectives about how to answer this question and then we'll be hearing from myself and Kenny doing a mock interview answer for that question so six medical students coming up giving you tips on how to answer the question and I'll see you in just a moment so it's a bit of a mean question don't go too hard on yourself don't kind of say oh you know I'm lazy I'm terrible with my time but similarly don't say you're a perfectionist because medicine is not really the career for you if you are and it's a bit cliched you know one of the things I've heard people say is that they take on too much they find it hard to say no to opportunities prioritizing when they've got lots of things on their plate are all things that they could work on so anything that's not to sort of self that's not to sort of self damning but another good way to follow it up is to say how you're working on it so I'm not good with my time management however I've taken steps to adjust this and I'm now getting better at prioritizing things that need to be done immediately versus things that could possibly wait just something basic like that so what's your biggest we can weaken this question I think a lot of people see it as like a trick question and they feel like they have to say you know my biggest weakness is that I'm such a perfectionist or something like that basically turning a strength into weakness I didn't do that I was very honest about my biggest weakness which for me is anxiety I struggle with anxiety and that's something that ironwork could impact my practice and future method of pretending that I had a strength what I did is actually talk about how I'm doing to improve my weakness so I said I have anxiety but I speak to my GP about it regularly I had counselling I it's something that I tell people when I when I enter a stressful situation and busy the tips and tricks that I was doing myself to improve my weakness so don't feel like you have to sort of sell a strength as a weakness be open and honest about things that you really dig into the weaknesses but talk about how you're going to make those better and how you're going to change within yourself to make sure that they don't impact your clinical practice I think it's actually worth actually thinking again you know make it about you and and what is your biggest weakness what do you struggle with because everyone does struggle with some things so for me I know that my confidence was not very good it still was something I struggle with now and so that was really true I could say that actually I know that as a doctor one of the things I'm going to have to do is be confident in myself and my abilities to a point and I know that I have to learn where that point is so that I'm not too confident and I'm not under confident because actually both of those are bad for patient safety so if you can if you can link it to something that is true and realistic for you but also something that you're showing you're learning from it you're saying that I know that this is something that needs work and this is how can I change it so people get really worried about this question because they think oh crap how do I talk about my weaknesses about sounding too weak how do I sound like I'm not just beating myself up by saying I'm a perfectionist or something else cliche like that again I think it's good to be honest but not too honest so for example I wouldn't have said that I have poor timekeeping which is true very true because that's not a good quality in a doctor unless I could really justify how I've worked on it really well and improved a lot knowing your weakness is such an important part of medicine and all through your career you'll be encouraged to self-reflect every day through portfolios through revalidation so this is a really crucial question not just for interviews but just for life so actually just think honestly about it think where your weakness lies and how how you would you know go about to improve that so for me in particular I was I was always very much a perfectionist about it like a lot of medics I always have quite thorough with things almost to the point where it impairs the job so I think just being aware of that and saying you'll be aware of that and having strategies to deal with it okay so that was six medical students giving tips on how to answer the question what is your greatest weakness now we're gonna hear from myself and my friend Kenny who are going to be giving mock interview answers to the camera as if we were in an actual interview so I obviously knew the question was coming up but the answer I gave on camera is very similar to the answer I would have given back in the day when doing interviews and actually I think I've got asked that question like three times out of the four interviews and I gave pretty much the exact same answer every time Kenny didn't know the question was coming up so he's answer is completely off the cuff but I still think it's pretty good answer and hopefully you guys might learn something from it and might sort of get an idea of what an answer might look like but equally it's important to say don't try and copy answers you should never be copying answers from anywhere the right answer is what's the right answer for you so this is just to give you an idea of what some people might want to say but please don't think you have to copy this format anyway all that aside let's now hear from myself and Kenny giving answer to the question and I'll see you in a moment so I'd say my biggest weakness is probably public speaking so I've had a stutter since I was about age four and that has made it quite difficult for me to do public speaking in the past and also you know everyone everyone's got a fear of public speaking so maybe I'm just using about an exam excuse but I I kind of realized this when when weren't being asked to do presentations in English class you know even even something as simple as a book review would really get my heart rate up get me sweating and I I kind of thought that if if I if I do want to be a doctor and if I do want to teach because I quite like the idea of teaching then public speaking is something I do have to work on so I have been trying to improve my public speaking skills when I was in year 12 I decided to become a close-up magician so I learned a few magic tricks and then volunteered at the local Hospice to perform magic for the for the guests for the residents there and I performed at that Christmas party which was really really scary but it did help me improve my public speaking and apart from that I've also started working I've also started helping helping GCSE and a-level students with within maths and science and while it's not really public speaking as such it has kind of improved my confidence and helped me kind of realize that when when I know what I'm talking about then the confidence kind of kind of comes across and yeah it's it's still a work in progress you can probably tell from this interview about you know I'm still quite nervous when it comes to when it when it comes to speaking in front of people but it is something I'm working on but yeah I would say that's probably my biggest weakness at this point I think one of my biggest weaknesses can be summarized with the phrase if if you want something done well do it yourself because I think I'm a person that likes to do everything and I like to do everything because sometimes they think that I might I might not in an arrogant way but something I think I might be able to get it done may be quicker than someone or maybe - the way that I want it even though there's multiple ways of doing things in this and there's multiple ways that things might be able to be done so I think the fact that I always want to kind of take on a take on a burden or take on almost every role is something that I need to definitely work on because in a hostile environment doctors have one wrong dose of another role help healthcare sisters have have another role also but everyone kind of all past all works together and I also need to realize that I have my own limitations just because I want to do everything doesn't mean I'm good at everything that I do so I think it's definitely important for me to to learn or to take on board there there are some things that I might be better at neither people there are some things that people can do better than I can do and that's definitely something that I learned during my time in a committee when I was in school and essentially what this committee was was every other week we had to put put on a not I'm not a show but we had to put on almost like we essentially had to fill up the fill up an hour of kind of the year groups time and I was allocated to chairman of that committee and when I would give him that row I thought okay it's up to me to tailor age with people to come in and talk to the youth group it's up to me to lead with the committee members and find things that it's up to me to liaise with teachers and I quickly found out that I can't do all of that by myself and the reason why I'm in a committee is because there's other people who I might be able to delegate tasks to other people who might be able to do things better than I can so that's definitely a way that I improved what was my weakness and it's I think I still need to work on but this is something I'm not afraid to work on all right cool that brings us to the end of the video we've heard from six medical students giving their perspective on how to answer the question what's your greatest weakness we've heard from myself and Kenny giving mock answers to the interview question as if we were actually in an interview and yeah I really hope you found that useful I know this question causes a lot of anxiety but hopefully by now you've realized that it's not too bad and you've had some ideas about what you can say when you're faced with this question in an interview and just to reiterate biggest thing is that you make your answer personal to you and that really isn't a right or wrong answer so yeah I really hope you found that useful if you've got any questions at all about the medicine application or about anything else or if you go any suggestions for videos that we could be doing on the channel please leave a comment down below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can yeah if you liked the video please give it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed to the channel please consider doing so more videos coming out very soon about interviews and audio blogs as well about life as a medical student so thank you very much for watching have a great day I'll see you next time bye [Music]