How to handle interview questions on your strengths?

The job market continues to be increasingly competitive. Apart from having a well written resume to hand to your employer, you need to come up with a flawless performance in job interviews –to beat the competition from other candidates. Your success in your interview has a lot to do with how well you present your strengths and how you match them up with the job requirements. Here are some tips on how to answer interview questions that focus on your strengths.

Practice

First of all, you should have a look at your strengths in advance and practice presenting them to the interview panel. This helps in improving your confidence when you walk into the interview. You can identify your greatest strengths by brainstorming and making a list of these traits. Note down everything that enters your head instead of being modest about it. You can remove the irrelevant ones afterward if required.

Talk about experience

This includes your experience in working with a certain tool or type of assignment, know-how in a specialized business area, work achievements in related goods or customers, and so on.

Skills

Examples include selling software, coding in a programming language, managing events, translating from a different language, writing articles, etc.

Personal attributes 

Talk about your knack for team building, problem solving, persuasion, negotiation, and so on.

Education

You can bring up relevant education or training required for the job — like degrees, internships, certifications etc.

Give examples

To demonstrate your strengths, you can prepare examples or stories of how these helped in improving performance in your previous jobs.

Answering questions on strengths or weaknesses can be stressful experience for some. However, approaching these questions with shyness is not going to do you any good. There’s nothing wrong in bragging a bit about your distinctive strengths that make you the right person for the job. You can give a refined performance at the interview by spending some time on introspection and preparation.

Giving a professional answer to the “What are your strengths” question demonstrates to the interviewer that you have done the homework on the job opportunity and how your strengths can be used to succeed in that role. It will also show that you have taken the interview seriously and can be a good pick for the job.