What Are Your Strengths?

This post shall be tackling a common question that gets asked in interviews often. The importance of this question could mean the difference, whether you get the job or not. However, most people do not know how to approach the subject, let alone knowing what particular strengths to discuss.

Learning to talk about your strengths in an interview. It is essential to spend some time identifying your key strengths that are essential for the specific position. Practice talking about these strengths in advance. This way, you shall be ready for the big question.

We shall begin by identifying some of your critical advantages for any general job position.

1. Brainstorm

Take the time out to enumerate your most essential strengths – pick a minimum of 10 advantages. Do not be modest, as you need ten of your best muscles that will make you a firm fit to get the job. Write every advantage which you think will be vital to the position.

2. Focus

Reduce your listed strengths to the five best advantages which you shall be comfortable talking about. You could add more powers to this list because the more skills you have registered, the better for you. While you may be unable to speak about these strengths at all interviews, it is vital to have great alternatives.

3. Prepare Some Examples

Once listed, create several models or an excellent story for the interview. This story describes every one of your listed strengths. If you do not know how to produce unique and persuasive stories and instances from your previous work experience, you should research this.

Choosing the appropriate strengths.

1. Choose Accurately

Pick out all the advantages that you genuinely have. You should avoid choosing specific strengths that are irrelevant to the job position or because it had worked for your friend.

You should be yourself in the interview. You should be truthful and professional at the meeting. You shall sound more convincing and professional if you discuss genuine strengths that you possess.

2. Be Relevant to the Job

Spend some time analyzing the description of the job position. For every listed opportunity, you should identify the most relevant strengths. List and selects all the benefits that will be relevant to this job position.

3. Be Specific

You should choose specific strengths. Rather than saying you have “people skills,” which could come off as too dull and broad, say something different. You could say something like “persuasive communication” or “relationship building.”

Do not be generic. About 90% of most people in the same interview may claim similar strengths as you. Therefore, it would be wise to select something unique and specific to the job position that you are interviewing for.

4. Avoid Being Modest

One most common mistakes applicant make when asked this question is that they select lame strengths and weak praises. You should choose something awe-inspiring and compelling.

Avoid using the clichéd “easy to work with” as your primary selling point. Mostly, just about most professionals are easy to work with. For you to get this position, you have to demonstrate that you will bring more value to the job role.

5. Be Ready to Show Instances Where You Used Your Strengths

As previously mentioned, you would need a precise and straightforward example to back up each listed skills. However, you have to be careful in this particular place not to ramble on for longer than necessary here.

The answer that you give should be about 1-2 minutes in length. If you are looking to list three specific strengths and provide an example of each skill, it is essential that you practice correctly beforehand. This practice will ensure that you do it in a precise and straightforward way during the interview.

Do you not know your Strengths?

Whereas most people seem to know their strengths, several other people get stuck trying to remember any high strength of theirs. This problem gets worse if the particular talent relates to a position that you have never applied to previously. If you are like the latter group of people and get stuck while trying to list out your relevant strengths, do not panic.

Just use the following techniques:

1. Seek a Second Opinion

Ask anyone of your colleague or friends that you trust about the most important personal strengths that they think that you seem to have.

2. Dig Deeper for Relevant Clues

You should go back to your past performance reviews and assess some of the positive feedback that you had. Unearth previous emails commending you for your work.

For fresh graduates without any prior work experience, you could think about the positive feedback that you may have got. This idea could mean discussing possible feedback from your supervisors and professors from previous summer jobs and past internships.

3. Go Over your Resume

You should go over your resume and look for standard features in your past achievements. At times, we are very close to what we seek, that we tend to lose perspective. You should read through your resume with a fresh set of eyes. Approach your resume like it was the resume of your colleague or admired friend. Try to find some of the themes that stand out in the resume.

Or you could try using some electronic strength assessment program like the Strengths Finder assessment. This program asks you several questions for you to provide answers. After this, you then get a report which summarizes your most relevant strengths.

This assessment should help you out in sparking up some great ideas in this regard. It will help you concentrate your thinking towards these specific strengths. The outcome of this method can maintain in terms of personal and professional development.

Many corporations also use the technique as a strategy for improving employee performance.

Conclusion

The details, as mentioned earlier, are tips to answer questions related to your strengths when interviewing for a job position. Now, what if the interviewer does not ask you about your strengths?

If this is the case, you will have to look for a chance to talk about your strengths. You should also know that numerous other interview questions ask you about your strengths.

One such example is scenario questions or questions that ask you for your reaction to specific workplace challenges.
Now, I am sure you know what your strengths are, leave a comment, and let us know some of your advantages.