Interview Tips: What are your strengths and weaknesses

A very common question that we face in a job as well as internship interviews is, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” While we all prepare a response to this, are you sure you are giving the right response to this question? HR forms an important part of all interviews, and poor responses could lead to a rejection. This article will share interview tips and specific strategies to tackle this question precisely and effectively.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

You should keep the following pointers in mind while framing your response to this question:

1. Make a list of the skills and qualities that the recruiter is looking for in a candidate.

2. Make a list of your own skills, qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.

3. For strengths, find the skills that overlap in the above lists and focus on them. For weaknesses, you need to do the opposite. You need to pick items that are your weakness but are not among the key traits that the recruiter is looking for in a candidate.

4. Pick 5 strengths and weaknesses each to be on the safer side.

5. Prioritize these in order as the interviewer can ask you for any number of your strengths and weaknesses.

6. It is essential to have an example from your past experiences to illustrate each strength and weakness that you mention.

7. For weaknesses, mention that you are working on these weaknesses and trying to improve on them. Be ready to justify how exactly you are working on them, in case the interviewer asks.

8. Try to personalize at least a few, if not all, of the strengths and weaknesses that you pick.

It is important to personalize your responses in order to show the interviewer that you are being genuine and honest and not picking up cliched answers from the internet or some book. At the same time, keep in mind that not everything that you say in an interview can be fully personalized. Strive to make at least some portion of it personalized.

A good way to judge whether a given point is personalized for you or not is to hypothetically check, if say, another candidate were to use the same point, would it also hold true for the other candidate. If it will most likely hold true for other candidates as well, the answer is not personalized enough.

With the above guidelines, you can now frame your responses to such HR questions in a more effective manner. You can read the resources given below to help with further CV and interview support.

Here are some additional links that you may want to visit:

1. How to prepare for any interview | The 7 key components.

2. "Tell Me About Yourself"

3. What to do if I don’t know the answer?

4. Tackling HR Questions in Interviews

5. Interview Tactics: The Hook

Further Reading:

1. How to build a professional CV to get shortlisted

2. How to land an internship

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All the best!