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What are your Strengths - Interview Question Answer · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: What are your strengths is a great question to be asked in an interview, and nearly everyone does some preparation for this question.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge faced is giving a stronger answer than your competitors.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, we're going to take you through how to create a great answer to what are your strengths.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to discuss what the interviewer is looking for when asking this question, and we'll provide you with a couple of examples.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new to this podcast, Enhanced.training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers, and business owners improve their performance.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sharing my knowledge and experience of sitting in over a thousand interviews as a hiring manager, and I've also been recruited into many top companies like Innocent Drinks, EY, Fosters and others.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this podcast, please share it with others and visit us at enhance.training.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: When asked what are your strengths or a variation of this question, many candidates provide a list of their best points.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: This approach will not help you stand out.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Before we go further, let's cover the basics, creating your list of strengths.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of the best ways to find these strengths is to think about your current and previous roles.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here is a set of questions that you should take some time to answer.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, what tasks or activities do you really enjoy doing?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Second, what tasks or activities do you find easy and zoom through?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Third, what do you get compliments for from your colleagues, your friends, your family?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And four, in your last two or three appraisals, what were highlighted as your strong points or where did you do well?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth, what do you do that gives you energy and makes you feel excited?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: 6.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Which projects that you worked on were a great success and what did you do that made them a success?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Go through these questions, write down your answers and see what themes come out.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: The themes that come out are likely to be your strengths.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And put your strengths in order with the strongest or best first.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then create a short story for each strength which demonstrates why the strengths you have chosen are valuable to any potential employer.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, always frame your answers in terms of how these strengths help the company in which you are working.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And by help we mean saved time, saved money, reduced hassle, or increased revenue or decreased risk.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go through what the interviewer is looking for before coming back and refining your stories.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The interviewer wants to understand what skills, character traits and experiences you believe are your strongest points and how these help the company solve its problems.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: What you choose to talk about says a lot about you, particularly when compared to what the other candidates choose to talk about.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: To do well with this question, you must talk about strengths that are relevant to solving the employer's problem or problems.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: This and the quality of your examples you use will make you stand out.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some questions for you to think about.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, do my strengths match what is needed for this role?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Second, how am I going to demonstrate I've looked at the job specification and understood the key requirements for the job?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And three, what examples am I going to use to make my answers stand out?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: As well as what you say, the interviewer will also be assessing your confidence level, how clearly you tell your story, and how credible your answer and examples are.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, everything is relative to the job you are applying for and the answers the other candidates provide.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: The next step is to make your answers relevant to the employer's problems.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is such an important point we're going to explore it further.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: To make your answer relevant, understanding what the employer is looking for or what their problems are is pretty key.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what is written in the job specification or advert, then think about all the issues you have seen relating to the areas you've pulled from the specification or the advert.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Think about when and how you have solved them.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you work out what the potential employer is looking for and what problems they are probably likely to have, then you can give a relevant answer.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the more relevant your answer, the more interested they will be in hiring you because you could solve their problems.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: A very simple example of this would be as a hiring manager, my problem is that I don't have anyone to create and manage the group's financial reporting.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if as a candidate you talk about your extensive skills and experience in business partnering with operations teams, this doesn't help me, the interviewer, solve my most pressing problem.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So to get me interested, you need to talk about your financial reporting skills and experience.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure this seems obvious to most of you, yet way too many candidates don't make their answers relevant to the specific job in question.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do this to give a good answer.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Getting a job offer is a competition and you have to stand out to get that offer.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, go through the job advert carefully or take notes when the recruiter is describing the role to you and spend time researching the company.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the problems you have seen that are faced by this specific role.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The last stage is to include examples in your interview question answers.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you state to an interviewer that you can solve a problem, then the interviewer will be interested in understanding more.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you can prove that you have solved the problem before and you can do so again, then they will be interested in hiring you.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: All candidates make statements during interviews.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The problem the interviewer has is working out which candidate is the best at solving the problems they have.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you make a statement with total confidence, the interviewer will still have some doubts that you can actually deliver what you say you can.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Good interviewers look for proof.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: In the interviewing setting, the proof is in the examples that you provide.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: The better candidates always provide examples.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Great candidates provide clear, well structured, highly relevant examples that have the interviewer thinking about start dates.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're going to share two examples for what are your strengths.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, for a professional level or a junior manager.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a very determined person, keen to learn and have good people skills.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: A good example that demonstrates this is when I was working in customer services, and I was always given the most difficult customers all problems to solve.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: We had a policy of no returns after 14 days after the purchase date.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: This left us with quite a few angry customers who didn't shop with us again.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I brought this problem up with the management team and suggested that we be given discretion within a framework to take returns after 14 days.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: This idea was dismissed initially.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't lose heart and I thought about how I could reposition my suggestion.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I looked through the data on the customers who had complained in the past, and 73% had not made another purchase in six months.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I persuaded the management team to let me do a trial with a more flexible approach.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: This reduced the number of customers that did not buy from us again in the next six months to under 20%.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sales increased as a result in our department by 11% and profits by 18%, and I was given a nice bonus.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our second example is for a more senior manager.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have strong team management skills, I'm good at managing complex projects and keeping individuals across the business engaged and doing what is needed at the right time.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: A good example of this is when I was asked to deliver a new ERP system for the company.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: This required educating 53 users on how the new system was going to work, designing a ton of new processes in and outside of the system, and keeping three departments involved and happy and getting a sign-off for all the changes we proposed at board level.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Once the planning stage and the sign-off was completed, I worked closely with my team and the various departments over the critical stages of the project.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: We had to get all data organized in the right way and make sure it was complete.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then we had to train 53 users and test the system while doing so.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: The investment in the project was considerable for the company, so I spent a lot of time with the board members and department heads to make sure all the key needs were met, and everyone knew what was needed by when.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: We kept ahead of schedule due to my efforts.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: My team and I delivered the project within the time frame we had set out and 5% under budget.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: The new system allowed the company to grow by 25% the following year with only a 3% aheadcount increase.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: We also increased the gross margin by implementing a better product mix.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: The company profit increased by 50%.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I got a promotion, a large bonus, and a best project manager award because of the success of this project and how I managed it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, these examples have given you some inspiration to create your own great and relevant answer to what are your strengths.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, make sure you keep your answer clear, well structured, and relevant to the key requirements of the role or the problems the company is hoping to solve by hiring you.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, if you like this podcast, please share it with friends and colleagues and visit us at enhance.training to find more articles, podcasts, and videos on all aspects of the job hunting process.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.