A conscious living always knows how to evaluate its core area of strength and where they are lagging. Working and facing obstacles during work or the course of our life is a part of our existence. Though what we will discuss in this blog is very different, we will focus on our core strengths and weaknesses during a job interview.
When we face an interview, there should be ample preparation that one should give to themselves if it is the first time while you are facing it.
When this becomes a normal process, the fear of facing the interviews will fade away, and your confidence will rise. In this blog, we will thoroughly discuss the areas of strengths and weaknesses where we can improve if we plan and work accordingly.
We should know how to analyze SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) before facing any interview or beginning work. SWOT is our core Strengths, where we are lacking behind, or the area of improvement, which is our Weakness; the new horizon we can open for ourselves once we dive into the work that we will choose is Opportunity. The last one is the threats we face while commencing that activity.
We can start doing our SWOT analysis on paper, making four blocks, and jotting down everything that pops into our minds. Summarize it and then deeply understand it. It is the way your conscious mind tells you about your goals.
Table of Contents
Facing the interview
While you are facing the interview, it is a basic question that the person taking your interview would ask “What are your strength and weakness.” The idea behind asking this question is to analyze your capability of getting a job done. They want to know how you will perform an actual task. The answer to this question determines your value to the company.
Environment while facing a Job Interview
The external stimulus or the environment plays a very important role when a candidate faces the interview. Like how is the atmosphere? Is it welcoming or subdued? It greatly depends on your interaction level with the person taking your interview. Is everything going positively, or are they prejudiced about your knowledge and ability to perform?
Many times, it has been seen that a person fails in the interview because they were not their true self. While the environment is not under our control while we are giving the interview, our ability to perform in it depends on us.
Our body language conveys a lot, even if it can convey what our words cannot. Our dressing style is vital in transforming our confidence and radiating our positivity. We should wear formal; these small things can impact our interview and convey much about us.
Here are some more reasons why the interviewer wants to know about your strengths and weaknesses.
- The person taking your interview wants to know how you are self-assessing yourself. You must be clear about your strengths and weaknesses; only then can you perform the job.
- The most important thing that an interviewer wants to know is how you will use your positive traits while doing a job and getting it done. Often, when we need to be clearer on our core competencies, we fail to execute our strengths properly, and most of the time, it turns out to be a weakness.
- Knowing your weakness is also considered a good trait. When one is fully aware of their low points, they tend to do that particular job as a team worker or by taking help. How you work for your weaknesses and turn them into one of your strengths is important.
- Are you a team member? The interviewer wants to test you on this basis and looks at whether your strengths can work with the team and whether you can overcome your weaknesses while working in a team. What benefits can you bring to the table while performing with the team?
List of Possible Strengths and Weakness
Strengths and Weaknesses are part of our living course. Every individual performing any set of tasks, whether daily life tasks or during a job, can have some areas where they are good at, and some things cannot be that good or may be termed a weakness.
There are well-defined areas of strengths and weaknesses being identified in most individuals. Some of them are mentioned below.
10 Areas of Strengths
- If you can accurately predict something while doing a task in the job. Doing something precisely can be termed a strength.
- If you can do a particular task in a short period, it can be known as brevity.
- When you are assigned a task. The level of clarity you bring to it. For performing any task at your workplace, clarity is needed.
- Being creative is considered to be a blessing for the career. If an individual can bring out creative and out-of-the-box thinking while doing a task, it is considered a big boost in productivity and very good for the team’s performance and the individual. Creativity is a trait that can be developed as we gain experience; it lets us see the bigger picture, and the individual learns new methods to be more productive. They emotionally invest themselves in thinking about success rather than failure. It also increases collaboration among the team members.
- Your determination level also can be considered your strength. It also tells how much you have invested in the job and how focused and determined you are to perform the task. Determination is generally treated as a positive outcome at work, and your determination level determines the work’s success.
- One of the most underrated yet useful things one can practice at their workplace is how disciplined you are. Being disciplined helps you follow the protocols and the necessary things to be taken care of to determine better productivity. Being disciplined not only reflects in the individual’s working style but may also impact the productivity and the team.
- Being dedicated to your work and its surroundings is another strength you can show during an interview. Dedication can only be gained once you start enjoying and loving your work and how you do it. However, the dedication level of any individual depends on various other factors and forces of life that work on a personal and professional level.
- Being honest these days is also considered a strength. Being honest about your work to your team and your organization helps improve productivity. Honesty is something built into a person; it is very difficult to teach. It is something you are born with.
- Being flexible about anything that can have a direct impact on your career or at your workplace. Some jobs may require you to work odd hours; others may require learning new skills. Your flexibility towards your job determines how effective and productive a player you are.
- An enthusiastic person is considered one who is always eager to learn new things and to do things differently. It can be your strength as an enthusiastic person who always brings new things to the table, and your eagerness to learn turns out to be positive for the company.
10 Areas of Weakness
- The first and foremost weakness that can impact your career is not being a team player or being unable to multitask. In today’s world, where the business world, technological advancement, and communication are going at such a speed rate that an individual has to multitask, failing to do so can turn out to be a weakness or a great threat to your career. However, multitasking is considered a bad practice because you cannot concentrate on one thing. But as the world is developing, so is the human tendency to perceive a thing; there is so much on the table that you must perform simultaneously.
- The second most dangerous weakness that you can have if you cannot work in a team. There is no chance that your productivity is judged individually in front of the company’s productivity. You are always the piece of the puzzle; productivity vastly depends on how your team is performing. You must be a team player rather than a lone survivor to fit in that puzzle.
- One more cause for your weakness can be if you do self-critics a lot. This is generally an inbuild body trait and happens when you are negatively influenced and have low self-esteem. You can slowly build this weakness into one of your strengths by getting inspired by good work and opening your mind to learn new things. It is good to evaluate yourself, but criticizing shows your negative influence. No company wants a negatively influenced person on their team. You should get rid of this weakness as quickly as possible.
- Sometimes what you perceive as your strength can be one of your weaknesses as development and growth happen. One such thing is if you are very detail-oriented. The world is growing fast, and development is everywhere; one of the things that cause hindrances to this growth is time—being detailed oriented means you are taking extra time either to explain things or to instruct. You might not be able to understand the course of business. In today’s business world, we have to perform by utilizing minimum resources. You are simply an outcast when you do not match your team’s pace.
- Overthinking not only hampers you in your personal life but also negatively impacts your professional life. Overthinking about any task or course of work tends to make you prejudiced about anything. When you think and work according to the process, instead of wasting your energies on predicting the outcome, whether they are good or bad, you will fail for sure. It is a well-established fact that we indulge in the process, not stick our minds to the outcome we are most likely to succeed. This weakness is mostly inbuilt, or you slowly develop it due to a lack of knowledge. By developing our knowledge and investing more in our personality development, we can overcome it.
- Another trait that can hamper your career by turning out to be a weakness is being an introvert. An introvert is someone who is not a team player. This inbuilt weakness does not allow you to be free, expressive, helpful, full of empathy, etc. At the same time, working in an organization, especially in a team, if you are not well versed with your team just because you can not share and keep it to yourself. Being introverted generally makes you an individual player rather than a part of a team. As mentioned earlier, by being an introvert, you are welcoming other weaknesses inside you.
- Being a perfectionist can also result in being one of your weaknesses. Perfectionists generally tend to welcome more troubles. Companies generally need someone who can do the work as it is, without further digging into it. Perfectionists generally are not team players, as they hamper other work to make everything perfect.
- Being not a good presenter. Now, this is something that you can learn and develop slowly as you gain experience. Being able to present things makes you stand out. It also depends on your communication level and your body language. A person who can effectively communicate whatever they have to get the necessary output also.
- In the modern era being a procrastinator is a very dangerous weakness. You tend to delay the course of doing on purpose. This generally happens as you are not motivated or less enthusiastic. This Is a habit you develop over time, do not develop it in you because it can impact you personally also.
- Another weakness can be when you are easily overwhelmed in situations. This tends to increase in deviation from details as you overlook certain things. You always feel it is too much of it, which makes you negatively influence.
Conclusion
In the end, I just want to say although practise can make you gain some experience and you can perform in an interview. Apart from practice, there are small changes that you can bring into your daily regime that will eventually help you to build new strengths