How to quickly find your strengths and weaknesses - #DearTBC

Hey Justine! Just wondering, how do you find strengths and weaknesses to talk about in interviews? Everything I say in interviews sounds wrong and the interviewers look bored when I talk about them.

Justine: Glad you asked! I present to you the simplest (and free) way to find out what are your strengths and weaknesses that I’m super sure we all love to do when we’re procrastinating: online quizzes.

We all take them, no shame in that, and we all go "omigod, this is so me, I need to share this." I take around 12 of them every pre-finals week, so I'm very aware of what kind of a friend a Scorpio, ENTP, wood pig, Ravenclaw is, thanks to my intense procrastination vibes. I'm also aware of how do the signs love, or how do they deal with stress, or what are they like when you're angry, and so on. You get my drift.

So, back when I was a sophomore and I had no idea what my true strengths and weaknesses were, I relied on using those amazing 'time wasters' to answer "what's your greatest strength/weakness?" Honestly, it's helpful when you're in a pinch, and it only takes a little bit of mental work to fixing them up to be interview-ready.

Choose only 3 traits max for strengths and for weaknesses, and figure out a story behind each. When was a time that you were disorganized, and how did you fix that? When was a time you were creative, and how did you show that?

Be concise with your stories, but also be engaging. You're talking about traits you got from stories (aka fandom or legends), there are stories there that can help you. Just read them and steal from them.

Don’t just say “My strength is blah. My weakness is blah.” and end it there.

And here are the links to finding out your strengths and weaknesses:

Hogwarts Sorting: http://bzfd.it/2r5Z3sk

Divergent Aptitude: http://bit.ly/2t6hcXy

MBTI: http://bit.ly/2rcJJhu

Chinese Zodiac: http://bit.ly/2t6gJVd

Western Zodiac: http://bit.ly/2rcRnbO

Hi! I’m Justine.

I’m the founder and writer of all things in The Bumpy Career and welcome to #DearTBC, a slot for really specific career-related questions that you’re worrying about, but you’re not quite sure who you can turn to. We answer in-depth so that anyone else who’s never wondered but wants to know, will know what to do next.

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