Don’t be a douche (like me): Your strengths are not your weaknesses.

I am sure most everyone has experienced about the oft-asked interview question requiring a job candidate to share his or her greatest weakness in the workplace. And most, including my former self, cleverly find ways to spin a strength into a weakness in response.

I can’t help but blush in thinking about my first job interview after college. I was nervous. I really didn’t even understand the job I was applying for. And I approached the interview as a way to test my ability to tell the interviewer what they wanted to hear. The weakness question came as expected, and I replied something to the effect of, “I suffer from a debilitating inability to stop working. I just can’t shut down. I work too hard. So I could get burnt out, and that’s a weakness.”

Man, what I douche I was. How I got that job I still don’t know.

Now, if I truly suffered from an insatiable desire to work ‘til I could work no more, my worst violation in that interview would have been limited to a ridiculous attempt to make myself sound like the ideal, dedicated, and unrelenting employee I was sure they were looking for. But in truth, I didn’t (and still don’t) suffer from any such affliction. I don’t mind work, but I don’t have any trouble stopping either. So I lied.

There were a lot honest answers to that question at that time in my life. For starters, I was prohibitively shy and I had trouble speaking up in groups. Second, I had trouble admitting to not knowing things. My brother once called me a “know-it-all” when I was around the age of 7. I responded, “I may not know everything, but I know at least half of everything.” Combine chronic shyness with unfounded arrogance in knowledge, and you’ve got a disaster on your hands. That was me.

Following that job, I somehow stumbled through a mediocre early career despite these true and lingering weaknesses. I was lucky to have bosses who liked me. They supported me. Promoted me. It was fine, but I didn’t feel I deserved whatever minor success I enjoyed (I still don’t, in fact, but that’s another post for another day).

It wasn’t until I decided to apply to graduate school that I had to address my weaknesses in earnest. As I prepared my b-school applications, I had way too many weaknesses and failures to spin into any plausible set of strengths. I had a horrible undergraduate GPA from a non-competitive school (ranked #134 by US News). I had a lackluster career in fundraising. I was from a small town in rural Arkansas, and therefore unsophisticated (or so I feared I would be perceived). I had never traveled. I had a decent GMAT, but that was it.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that all those weaknesses in my application were actually my greatest strengths. They were strengths because they represented me and my life experiences. They represented my insecurities, my perspective, my motivations. My story was incongruous. It had holes in it that needed filling. And it was in the filling of those holes that the admissions committee got to know me, beyond my scores, grades and professional experiences. I have to think that’s why I got into not just one but several top tier schools.

Since then, I’ve learned to celebrate my weaknesses. My shyness is gone, but I’m still insecure. And I still have trouble acknowledging that there are some (okay, many) things that I just don’t know. I work on it, but I also use them to my advantage.

Take my insecurity as an example. A huge part of my role as a founder and CEO of SocialQ is sales. Cold call sales. There’s nothing worse for someone who has any insecurities. But that insecurity actually breeds authenticity. After I send several emails to someone and they don’t respond, I feel insecure. So I actually tell them just that when I next follow up. I tell them, honestly, that the hardest part of my job is finding the balance between being persistent and being annoying and that I fear I may be crossing that line by following up again. That seems to resonate with a lot of people, and I get a response. It isn’t manipulative. It is honest. And so, my weakness emerges as strength. No spin required.

My insecurity makes it hard for me to end posts like this with a directive recommendation. I mean, who am I to be right? To tell others what do? And so I’ll end with a request. Find a parallel between my story and yours. See where it leads. You may be weaker than you want to admit, and that may turn out to be your greatest strength.