Interview Success: Addressing your strengths & Weaknesses

Being able to Interview well is an invaluable skill. One of the questions that will always come out in an Interview in one form or another is “what are you’re strengths and weaknesses”. To ensure your Interview success you need to be able to answer this questions well and in a way that lets the employer know you have the experience skills and attitude they are looking for.

Before we can answer this question in an effective way we first need to know what the employer is looking for in terms of skills and experience. I believe the best way to approach this is to ask yourself the following questions:

Now we know the answer to these questions you are well on your way to improving your Interview technique which will improve you Interview success.

Now lets start of with the positives, when you are asked what your strengths are it’s not enough to just list the skills, experience and traits you have that will be of use to the employer, you have to elaborate and explain how it can help the employer reach their goals, this one of the main keys to Interviewing well.

For example saying “I have a lot of contacts in the Industry” isn’t enough you need to further elaborate as to how having those contacts can help the employer, whether it’s a case of due to your contacts you know you can increase their sales or lower their production costs. You need to go into explicit detail how your strengths will be of advantage to the employer. That can be the difference between an average Interview and a super Interview.

Lets move on to weaknesses I suggest you name just one and if you are intelligent you can use it to highlight another one of your strengths. I suggest when discussing your weaknesses you say something along the line of “my main weakness is” then go on to name a positive trait such as precision. We then turn this into a slight negative by saying something like “I’m very hot on everything being precise, at times when other peoples part of the project isn’t up to the companies standards I get annoyed.” What you then do is continue by saying its something you’ve learnt to deal with and again highlight the strength which in this case would be precision.

So as an example a full answer to the questions what are your weakness could be “I’m very hot on everything being precise, my main weakness is at times when other peoples part of the project isn’t up to the companies standards I get annoyed. I’ve learnt to deal with this however and as supposed to getting annoyed I channel my energies in to the precision of my part of the project and making sure it’s as good as possible.”

Following these interview technique and you will dramatically improve your Interview success, this little tricks can be the difference between you interviewing well and the interview going not so well.