[2013/12/19] How to Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

[lancelot]

How to Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Method 1 of 6: In an Interview

1.Throw away the "weaknesses" that are really just strengths in disguise. Potential employers are not stupid, and can see right through this. They interview sometimes hundreds of people for a position, and everyone's first instinct is to use a strength and spin it as a weakness.

• "Strengths" that are commonly spun as "weaknesses" include:
  
• "I'm a perfectionist and I can't stand to get things wrong."
• "I'm stubborn and I don't let things go."
• "I struggle to maintain a good work/life balance because I work so hard."

2.Instead, identify a real weakness. Weaknesses are human. There wouldn't be any point in asking the question if all you gave the interviewer was some canned response about how awesome you are. The interviewer isn't looking for that. They're looking for a real discussion of things you can work on, a signpost of insight about yourself. Real weaknesses might include:

• Being overly critical
• Being suspicious (of authority, of peers)
• Being too demanding
• Procrastinating
• Being too talkative
• Being too sensitive
• Exhibiting a lack of assertiveness
• Exhibiting a lack of social tact

3.Acknowledge the bad parts of your weakness, and how they could affect your performance. It can be quite impressive to talk about how your weakness has affected or could potentially affect your work performance. It shows insight and truthfulness, although you still need to be tactful about what you say.

• Example: "Right now I am a procrastinator. I realize that this affects the amount of work that I could get done, as well as potentially the work that my colleagues could get done. In college, I got away with it because I knew the system, found a way to game it, and still got my work done. I realize that this won't work in the professional world, both because it's wrong and it's lazy."

4,Show the interviewer how you strive to overcome your weakness. Again, being practical here is better than being idealistic, because the idealistic response could seem unrealistic.

• Example: "I'm taking serious steps to curb my habit of procrastination. I'm setting artificial deadlines for myself and offering personal incentives to meet those deadlines. I'm also seeing a career coach (be truthful here, no lies) who is helping me unpackage the potential root causes of my procrastination, which we think could be arrogance."

5.Talk about your strengths confidently, without being cocky. Try to be confident while still staying humble about your achievements and skills. Of course, try to truthfully pick strengths that could be in line with the individual, business, or organization to which you are applying. Real strengths fall into three main categories:

• Knowledge-Based Skills: computer skills, languages, technical know-how, etc.
• Transferable Skills: communication and people management skills, problem solving, etc.
• Personal Traits: sociability, confidence, punctuality, etc.

Provide examples when talking about a strength. It's all well and good to say that you have amazing people skills, but it's another thing to show it. Illustrate what your strengths look like in real life by providing examples:

• "I am an excellent communicator. I care about the words that I use, and about avoiding ambiguity when I communicate. I'm not afraid to follow up with someone who's senior to me when I don't understand them. I take the time to imagine how different people might interpret questions or statements differently."

Question 

1. What is your Weaknesses?

2. What is your Strengths?

3. Let's  talk about a proper way to change from weakness to strength.  

4. How can we enhance our strengths?