The point of that question is not really to find out your greatest weakness. Here's what they want to know: 1. Whether or not you're reflective and self aware

The point of that question is not really to find out your greatest weakness. Here's what they want to know: 1. Whether or not you're reflective and self aware enough to identify weaknesses you have 2. What steps you've taken to improve that weakness. This demonstrates you can follow up on your self-reflection with action. Here's a way you could answer the question: One of my weaknesses is that I like to take tasks and do them on my own. This usually comes from my enthusiasm to accomplish a task, but unfortunately, I miss a few things along the way. For example, I was tasked to build product X. I (thought) I understood what was required, and just built it. I was super proud of myself for building X in record time and even added features that weren't requested. When I showed the final product to my boss, he said it was nothing like he wanted! I had to do the whole thing over again. That was crushing. I learned from that point on that I should ask clarifying questions to the people I'm working with and gather their input as I do my work. While this "slows" me down, I rarely build the wrong thing now. You answer with a concrete story about how you identified a weakness and then addressed it later, you'll be golden. Never just answer the question; get in the interviewers head and figure out what they're really asking, and answer that instead.