Mastering 'What Are Your Greatest Strengths?': Interview Tips

>>The popular interview question, "What are your greatest strengths?" should be an extremely easy question to answer, in theory.

After all, we know ourselves best, we know what our biggest strengths are. So why is this question still tripping up candidates

during job interviews? Because, as you'll soon notice, it's actually pretty challenging to balance your humility

with the need to project your successes and confidence. In this video, I first highlight three things you do not wanna say when preparing

for this interview question. Share three actions you wanna take instead, and end with an example answer

that I gave years ago, where I made these mistakes. And what I would do differently today. So let's get started.

Hi friends, welcome back to the channel. My name is Jeff, and if you're new here, I upload videos on practical career and interview tips.

So if you're a current student or young professional, consider subscribing for more actionable content. Diving right into the three things you do not wanna do

when preparing for the, "What are your greatest strengths" interview question. Number one, do not mention a hard or technical skill

as your biggest strength. You may well be an Excel guru. You could be someone

who makes the most beautiful PowerPoint slides, you can even know the Salesforce CRM system back to front. The two biggest issues with mentioning how you're great

with a particular piece of software, is that number one, one day your role may involve in a direction

where that product isn't relevant anymore. And number two, the company you're interviewing with

may be using an alternative solution. To give an oversimplified example, imagine if you were interviewing

for a project management role, and you said your greatest strength was how familiar you are with "Monday.com",

the project management software. Little do you know, the company's actually using "Notion" or "Asana"

for all their project management needs. Furthermore, there might be a lot of professionals in your target company,

who have been working with that product or software for much longer than you have. So saying how that technical skill is one

of your greatest strengths, might come off as a little bit presumptuous. Instead, what you wanna do,

is to prepare something that I call, "Transferable Skills" as your strengths. Because those can be applied

across a variety of responsibilities. It can grow with you as you progress in your role. Let's say you're interviewing for an entry level position

in the sales team as an accountant manager. And you say two of your biggest strengths are that you're honest and you're respectful of others.

Those are very healthy attributes to have as an account manager when you're dealing with clients everyday.

And when you progress to be a people manager, those are still extremely important strengths to have when managing a team.

And as a bonus to you all, I'm actually gonna add a list of transferable skills that will make great strengths,

down in the description bellow. By the way, if you liked that first tip, actually I have a Facebook group

where I share exclusive weekly tips. So consider joining if you haven't already. I'll link that down bellow as well.

Moving on to number two, do not talk about a strength that's irrelevant to the role you're applying for.

Can you imaging interviewing for an accounting role and telling the interviewer how amazing you are at creative thinking.

I mean, no offense to all the creative accountants out there. You could prepare a great response with the right numbers,

the right story, the perfect amount of impact you made. But the interviewer will still just be thinking, "Wow, this person did not do the research."

Instead, make sure to mention strengths that have a direct application to the job you're applying for.

Think about it this way, the interviewers know the qualities that the high performers already have, right.

So if you're able to see a strength that makes a connection in the interviewer's mind, between yourself and the high performers on their team,

they will start to unconsciously think about how you'd perform on the job. And I'm gonna say an unpopular opinion right now.

The best way to find a relevant strength to talk about is not through the job description, because they're often just too vague.

But rather asking someone who's working there already. In today's day and age, where everyone is so interconnected, there's really no excuse not to network,

and not to connect with other professionals through virtual means. Watch my videos on how to properly connect with others

on LinkedIn, and questions to ask during informational interviews, or coffee chats.

You don't even need to hop on a phone call. Finding a relevant strength could be as simple as sending a polite message

to an existing contact, with something like, "Hi, sorry to bother you, but if you could think back

"to a recent hire on your team who you enjoyed working with, "what made them stand out?" That question will prompt them

to think of specific attributes that you can leverage in your own answer. If you've enjoyed this video so far,

a like and sub to the channel would be amazing. Finally, the third thing you want to avoid doing. Don't rely completely on the "S.T.A.R" answer format

when preparing your story. When preparing stories to back your strengths up, you might be tempted to use the

"Situation, Task, Action, Results" format to structure your answer. But as I've mentioned in a previous video,

where I compare the "S.T.A.R" and "CARL" methods, for questions that require you to reflect on your experiences,

questions such as, "What are your greatest strengths?" You wanna make sure to include your learnings as part of your answer.

The "L" in "CARL". I actually made this mistake when I was interviewing a couple of years ago.

So let's jump into my answer from back then and show you what I would do differently today. Not that I'm interviewing right now, or anything.

So to prove to you I'm not making this up, this is a document that I was using to prepare for my interviews a couple of years back.

As you can see, I have input some behavior interview questions, like, "Why are you a good candidate?"

"Why you?" "Why are you leaving EY?" I was a managing consultant with Ernst & Young before this.

And here we go, "What are your strengths?" So, I basically followed the "S.T.A.R" format completely here.

I said one of my greatest strengths is that I've got strong communication skills. And for the experience that I gave,

the situation was I was working with a big 4 advertising agency here in Shanghai, one of our large clients.

The task was a fact that there were compliance issues at that branch and we were supposed to decrease that. The action that I took was,

because I have strong communication skills, I developed a working relationship with the CFO and on the ground staff.

So, one of my proposals was less extreme than the plan we were going to adopt. So I was able to sort of influence the key stakeholders

to adopt my plan. And the result rather is a fact that the number of compliance issues decreased because of my proposal.

So that wasn't necessarily a bad answer. But if I were using the "CARL" method, I would've included a "Learnings" at the end here.

And summarized how it was because of my strong communication skills that I was able to influence the CFO to go another route.

Which ultimately led to a fewer number of compliance issues. That would've emphasized my biggest strength in this case, as oppose to just ending with a result to the

"What's your biggest strength" interview question. That might sound like a very small thing, but a small adjustment like that

can make quite a big difference. All right, and there you have it. Three things not to do when preparing for the

"What are your greatest strengths" interview question and what to do instead. If you wanna come up with strong answers

to the most common behavioral interview questions, check out this playlist, where I break down each one and provide sample answers.

Subscribe if you haven't already. Comment down below if you have any questions, and as usual-- Have a great one.