This is the most common HR interview question, but equally important in the overall interview process. Most of the time, this question looks very easy, but not that easy when it comes to a well-articulated answer for this HR interview question. In this blog, we will explain a 4 step process to craft your answer, followed by a sample answer.
1) How to approach this HR interview question?
There are two important aspects of your life – experience, and belief. Experience meaning learning by doing, whatever you’ve learned by experiencing things in life; while beliefs can be coming from your background, or some fascination you have for a particular thing. Focus here on your experiences more as it’s the best way to answer this question. The more you focus on experiences, your answer will look more genuine and perfect, rather than making up stories.
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2) What you should not do while answering this HR interview question?
Commonly people focus on a few adjectives that they have picked up from various websites and use them to describe their strengths, trying to relate them to their work experience or background. Our advice – don’t do that. You are following a top-bottom approach, where you pick your strengths from the outside world and try to find an escape. In this case. it should be reversed and a deep introspection is required.
3) What should you do to frame the answer to this HR interview question?
Just do the opposite of the above mentioned ‘do not’ rule. Write down all your experiences, your achievements, and try extracting your key learnings, see what you’re good at and what you’ve executed very well in the past. They can be similar to those adjectives you might have looked up before but you’ve got to spice things up a little.
For freshers – These could be internships or part-time jobs, being part of cultural activities and programs back in school or college, managing a certain event, or being part of the management team. Just list some of the best things you’ve done and what you’ve learned from them. List down the learnings and surely, you’ll be able to find your strengths from this list.
For experienced people – People who already have substantial work experience can do the same, make themselves a list of things they have achieved so far in their respective fields, and how it can apply to their new jobs. Mention previous projects, check what strength you projected, the responsibilities you took, the duration of these projects, what all it brought to your previous firms, what they gained from it, personally and professionally. Go back and review everything you’ve done to understand your key achievements.
After this exercise, you will find a lot of common skills and strengths, from your previous work. This is the key and now you can easily pick the top 2-3 strengths, which you can relate and contributed the most.
4) How to design your answer for this HR interview question?
So, after you finished step 3 and listed down a couple of strengths, then the next step would be to present the best one. Generally, in an interview, you will get the chance to mention 1 or 2 of your strengths, so you have to make sure to pick the best. The strategy to showcase your best project as an example of your strength will get the interviewer excited, which will lead to them asking you more about the project, questions like whats and hows, giving you the spotlight to shine and explain your participation or leadership in the said project. This way you can drive the interview and will get extra points as well.
Sample Answer
‘I believe that one of my key strengths is to coach and mentor people. In my previous organization, I have done this with individuals and also with teams. In 2017, I executed a project in Mumbai where I turned around an underperforming team of 5 people, in just 3 months.’ The process involved extensive training and coaching, to enhance the team’s productivity and morale. Fortunately, we have achieved the desired outcome as a team and also for individuals.
It’s important to approach this question with your experiences. The more they know about your involvement in different projects, the more they (and you yourself) understand your strengths.
We have also answered a few more questions such as Why do you want to join our company? What is your weakness? Interview tips etc. Why should we hire you?
Feel free to go through them and you can also submit any request. We will answer that for you. In case you need any guidance, connect with us.
