How to Highlight Your Strengths in a Job Interview?

When you face the interview board for an interview, you must highlight your strengths to your advantage. Besides submitting your resume showcasing your talent, it is your duty to dwell in length about what your strengths are, how you are an asset by virtue of your strengths to the organisation, how your strengths are useful to the organisation and how you will fit into the organisation and how you will use your strengths by virtue of your proven ability to advance the cause of the organisation. You must use your communication and persuasive abilities to convince the interview board that you are really an asset to the organisation by virtue of your strengths.

The process of interview is the final hurdle that you have to clear to get your coveted job. It is true that you have already submitted a resume detailing your qualifications and showcasing your strengths for the job. Now you have been invited for the interview, a never-to-be missed opportunity. It is your golden chance to grab it with both hands. However, it is always good to make some home work for the interview. Now it is your duty to prove what your strengths are and how those strengths will be making you more fit and suitable person for the job. To put it in other words it is your bounden duty to prove how you will be an asset and how your strengths will be more helpful for the growth of the organisation. Besides it is also necessary to show how you will be effectively dealing with the day to day works of the organisation with your strengths, you will be tackling those difficult situations that may arise in the organisation and above all how you will be utilising your strengths to carry it forward.

You may be a person seeking the job as the first-timer or you may be a person who has quit your earlier job seeking better prospects.

If you are a first-timer, you have some disadvantages. You are lacking in experience and you have no stories to tell about your previous work experience. Then, you have no other go but to highlight your academic qualifications, extracurricular activities and your academic experience etc. If you had applied for a job in an organisation whose recent project deals with disaster management, they may ask you how as a novice you will be a better person for this job. Fortunately, you had dealt with an assignment with disaster management in your college, led your college team to help the flood affected victims, by rescuing a few of them, evacuating and accommodating them in a safe area, providing them food and clothing, besides admitting your own friend who had become a victim of flood etc. Then it is your turn to provide a graphic account of your experience in disaster management using your communication skills rather convincingly with all your humility. You are sure to catch the eye of the interview panel.

If you are attending the interview by quitting a job that you had already held, you are in an advantageous position to offer something about your previous job experience. They may even question you why you had left a job with a lucrative salary. Then you may have to explain that you are seeking a challenging position with better prospects. The interview panel may even tease you with a question, ‘having already quit the job, what will you do if you are not given a chance here?’ Then you have to highlight your positive frame of mind with the reply, ‘I am hopeful of getting this job. Even if I am not selected, I may have a better avenue in the near future.’

You are attending the interview for one of the four key posts of General Managers of Air Tel. But you have already resigned as the Deputy General Manager’ of a specific area, say Cuddalore SSA (Secondary Switching Area) in the Department of Telecom. You have served for twenty years in the Telecom department as a class I officer. But considering your age, technical qualifications (a Masters in communication Engineering in IIT, Madras), you consider that what you are being paid as salary- a maximum of Rs 30,000/-as fixed by the previous pay commission- you have reached a saturation point and your pay scale may not improve until the next pay commission revises it. There is no sign of new pay commission in the near future, say within one or two years. But you have only five years of service left at your disposal. Therefore, you feel there is no meaning in sticking with a department which does not offer a good pay commensurate with your ability and so considering your age and service at your disposal you have decided to quit the telecom department. Air Tel offers more than 10 lakhs per annum towards your salary and perks, besides promising better promotional avenues in tune with your ability. Air Tel may be convinced when you proceed to explain why you have decided to quit the telecom department. But they need to be convinced on one more aspect, about your past services in telecom and how it will be useful for Air Tel.

Then you may have to explain, how as the deputy general manager of the telecom department, you have expanded the capacity of Cuddalore SSA from just 5,000 telephone connections into 10,000 within a short period of six months and how Cuddalore is also expanding towards 20000 lines with a digital exchange in the near future. Your experience will be a pillar of strength for the expansionist programs of Air Tel. Having been convinced, Air Tel will have no hesitation to appoint you even for an augmented salary by negotiating with you.

Similarly, as a practising lawyer, when you apply for the post of a law officer in the central government at Delhi, you may have to explain your credentials as mentioned in your resume, besides explaining your standing in the Bar and your areas of specialisation in practising law. As a law officer, you may have to attend courts representing the department of legal affairs for which your standing in the bar and your ability to practice in the highly specialised areas of law will help you and you must showcase them as your strengths for getting appointed.

Thus during an interview you must show that you have unique talents coupled with your educational qualifications and experience that put you in a distinctly advantageous position over others. Besides, you must also explain with your persuasive and effective communication skill that how with your proven ability, you will utilise your pillar of strengths effectively in the new organisation to its distinct advantage. Then the interview panel will have no hesitation in selecting you since you are an asset to their organisation by virtue of your strengths.

I hope you understand- how to highlight your strengths in a job interview by above paragraphs(knowledge). Thanks for looking and please don't hesitate to make a comment (feedback)...

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