How To Answer “What Are Your Strengths And Weaknesses?”
“What are your Strengths and weaknesses?” — is considered one of the most popular questions asked by interviewers during an interview. But most of the time, applicants hesitate to respond to them or don’t even consider answering these questions by keeping themselves quiet. It may look like you are not interested in the job role. However, knowing the ideal approach in responding to these questions can maximise your hiring chances with employers.
At first, you must understand why they ask these questions during an interview, then only you will be able to treat this in a better way. In an attempt to learn more about your personality, usually, hiring managers ask these questions to the candidates. Their purpose is to evaluate if you are the perfect fit for the job role and accountable for the job responsibilities.
Why do employers ask the question “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”
Every person has strengths as well as weaknesses. But during interviews, applicants try to talk more about their positive sides and hide their weaknesses in fear of losing the opportunity. However, having weaknesses is not unsatisfactory, but ignoring them can harm your chances of getting a desirable job. Learning how to improve your weaknesses and convert them into strengths can make you stand out.
A recruiting manager wants to be familiar with the character you hold. Because it will help them to identify your best qualities while applying for a particular job role. They need to analyze the x-factors you possess to fit the opportunity. Also, the approach of representing your strengths helps the organisation understand your attitude towards the company.
Thus it becomes necessary to prepare for an interview keeping in mind your strengths and weaknesses. Here we have mentioned some common strengths and weaknesses that a job seeker might mention:
Strengths: -
- Communication Skill
- Leadership Skill
- Listening Skill
- Love to work in a challenging atmosphere
- Quick Decision Maker
- Problem solver
- Honest
- Hardworking
- Perfectionist
- Enthusiastic
- Flexibility
- Versatility
- Out of The Box Thinker
- Sincerity
- Creativity
Weaknesses:-
- Becomes too serious about work
- Fear of Public Speaking
- Take too much responsibility
- Can’t say a hard NO
How to answer “What are your Strengths and Weaknesses” in an effective manner?
Asking about your strengths and weaknesses looks unreasonable sometimes, but the strategy behind the questioning is excellent. It’s a tricky question designed to compel you to make a mistake while answering it. The question is asked to the candidates intentionally to notice how self-aware they are.
If you know the question could trip you up, let’s take a moment to discuss the strategy that can help you in dealing with it. Before talking about your strengths, learning how to answer your weaknesses before hiring managers is one of the wisest decisions you could make.
What are your Weaknesses?
While talking about your weaknesses, you must remember not to represent them negatively. Deal with a little cleverness, and try to portray your answer to influence the hiring managers effectively. It will be pretty rare when a hiring manager expresses curiosity to know both of your qualities by asking one question.
But if the situation comes when the interviewer asks you about your strengths and weaknesses at the same time, you need to make sure that you do not end up with your weaknesses. Always, try to seek their attention towards the best possibilities that you can offer to the organisation as an employee. Start with your weaknesses and try to wrap it up by mentioning your strengths to leave them with a good impression. So, most importantly, prepare yourself to answer about your weaknesses first!
If you are not good at the skill mentioned in their job description, then show your interest in learning or improving the skill by joining a course or program.
What are your Strengths?
It’s not like we don’t know how to answer “What are your Strengths?” But gaining knowledge about the correct approach can make you well-prepared, and confident for the interview.
Generally speaking, when we go for an interview, we try to put forward our best to the organisation to make them think positively about us. It’s an important step to measure how the strengths match your job priorities. Prepare the possible answers ahead of time and see how quickly you can obtain a better position in the organisation.
Let’s discuss in brief how you can expose your personal strengths in the best possible way.
Think about your strengths:
Carry out in-depth research and prepare a good answer in response to your strengths. Use your Google search abilities to find out more about the company’s needs. Review the job description efficiently and make a note of your strengths that ideally match the job role.
Prepare the answers to support your past experiences:
Once you finish your research, devise your best answers to support your strengths. It would be a good idea to give them some real-life examples from your past work experiences. It will be more effective than verbal claims. Share your ideas on how you dealt with the challenges to achieve success in your career.
Explain all the accomplishments you got in your career as an employee
Don’t mention your traits that are not beneficial for the interview
Not only does responding to these questions make you confident about your capabilities, but also prepares you to answer this question. However, you should learn to answer these two questions separately. But preparing an effective answer combining both of your qualities keeps you a step ahead of your competitors.
Source — https://www.jobsineducation.net/blog/how-to-answer-what-are-your-strengths-and-weaknesses