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Everyone wants to have an interesting job in a company that they have known and dreamed about for a long time. But before you become an employee of such a company, you have to write a resume. If the employer is interested in it, the candidate will be invited for an interview. At this stage, it is important not to relax, but to prepare.
Before the interview, you will have to go through a resume selection stage.
First, review the possible interview questions and think about your answers. One of the most popular is a description of strengths and weaknesses. Often at this stage many candidates are eliminated. Therefore, it is worth paying special attention to it.
Rules for conducting self-analysis
Self-analysis is the best way to independently determine your positive and negative qualities. Take 1-2 hours to reflect. You need to be in complete silence and a calm atmosphere at this time. It is important that the person is not distracted by anything. Writing down all the qualities on a piece of paper is the most effective solution. The following rules must be followed:
- The list of pros and cons needs to be updated every 2-3 months.
- You need to be as sincere as possible.
- All your thoughts and ideas on this matter must be written down.
- It is important to keep your records in one place. This could be a diary, notebook, or electronic document.
- This simple method will help determine the effectiveness of working on the negatives. It will provide a powerful incentive for self-development.
Employers often ask you to name three negative qualities. But it’s better to think about 7 strengths and 7 weaknesses to avoid an incident.
It is not always important to answer correctly. It is better to tell the truth than to voice banal, memorized and alien phrases. After all, they may not correspond to the applicant’s lifestyle and temperament. You should always remain yourself and not imitate ideals. After all, if a candidate lies, then in the process of work all his disadvantages will very quickly appear. And no one is safe from dismissal.
There are situations when it is better to change jobs. Having correctly identified your strengths and weaknesses, you can think about which position is more suitable for a person. After all, there are people who are interested not only in salary levels, but also in the opportunity to maximize their full potential.
I like clear instructions
There are some employees who feel confident only when they have clear instructions: deadlines, tasks and how to complete them. If such an employee is given only a goal, he is lost and does not know how to achieve it.
It all depends on the position. Some specialists are prohibited from deviating from the instructions, while others, on the contrary, are given complete freedom of action. If it’s difficult for you to make decisions, but you have to do it every day, tell us how you learned to be independent, what difficulties you overcame and what successes you achieved.
Assessment of deficiencies
Admitting your weaknesses is not an easy task. Everyone has disadvantages that I don’t want to talk about at all. But you need to be able to filter information and know what can really be mentioned at the interview and what can be left out.
You need to evaluate what can be said about shortcomings, and what is better to remain silent about
Many people are surprised that excess weight can be listed as a weakness on a resume. But for some professions this is a really important factor. It determines endurance, the ability to work for a long time and continuously, and to move quickly. Recruiters immediately write about this in the job description in order to weed out unsuitable candidates.
List of deficiencies that can be reported:
- excessive self-criticism;
- perfectionism or excellent student syndrome;
- excessive emotionality;
- excessive straightforwardness;
- reliability;
- desire to please everyone;
- learning disabilities;
- poor understanding of technological innovations;
- lack of professional education, work experience in the required field, etc.
An excellent solution is to indicate weaknesses that do not affect the efficiency and quality of work. You can mention the disadvantages that are not significant for the position. It is important not to get carried away so as not to question your professional suitability. You need to be as sincere and honest as possible. And it is also important to emphasize your strengths, which cover your shortcomings.
The second piece of advice is to note the weaknesses that were changed. When hiring, this will demonstrate that the candidate is ready to develop and become better. Time management skills can be reported. Especially if a person gets a leadership position or one that involves multitasking. It is important to describe in detail how a person came to be able to manage time wisely. The main thing is to speak briefly.
The third way is to present your shortcomings in a favorable light. The main idea is to make them attractive to the employer and show that they do not interfere with work. It is useful for an analyst to go into too much detail, for a TOP manager to work for results and do everything only at the highest level.
Mention of personal qualities should be avoided. They are of no interest to the recruiter. It's better to focus on professional skills. You can share your bad experience at your previous place of work. But be sure to mention how you managed to correct the situation.
It happens that a candidate is not suitable for a position due to the lack of the most important quality. For organizers, these are problems with punctuality, for account managers - with speech, for managers - fear of public speaking. But there is no need to be afraid of this. It’s better to just look for another job where the lack of such skills or qualities will not be critical.
“Where do you see yourself in five years/ten years?”
This question is a test of your ambition, the adequacy of your assessment of professional experience, and whether you set long-term goals and whether you plan to achieve them. The answer depends on whether you are truly ambitious. If yes, then according to Natalya Ionova from CAF Group, it is even appropriate to answer that you want to take a leadership position. But you need to do this in such a way that your plans do not look like a threat to the career of the manager who is interviewing you. In this situation, Ionova shares, the appropriate answer is: “I think that by this time I will be able to significantly increase my competence, which will allow me to rise to the next level.” But it’s better not to specify exactly what level.
If you are quite comfortable holding one position for a long time or you have enough changes in the horizontal plane, feel free to say that you plan to develop in your field in order to become an expert and join more complex projects: study, go to conferences, exchange experiences with colleagues.
In any case, Natalya Makhmutkina believes, there is no point in inventing or embellishing a career path that you are not going to follow. If from the very beginning you say that you want to take a leadership position in the company, but in fact agree to horizontal growth, then they will ask you more than you can give. Don’t reveal your grandiose plans during an interview with a company where you cannot implement them. Ionova adds that there is also no need to say that you have no plans at all, just as there is no need to delve into personal prospects.
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Assessment of positive qualities
Communication skills as a quality are necessary when working in a team
More often than not, it is the question about strengths that puts a candidate in an awkward position. He is afraid of overdoing it and overpraising himself. Therefore, really assess your capabilities, analyze your personal qualities and highlight only the positive ones. Experts advise dividing skills into 3 groups:
- Knowledge based skills. They are obtained through experience and training. These are computer skills, fluency in a foreign language, the ability to work with the necessary programs, etc.
- Mobile skills. They carry over from one job to another. This is the ability to establish contact with any person, planning and analysis skills, the ability to quickly solve problems, and the ability to work efficiently in stressful situations.
- Personal qualities. These are the unique properties of each person.
There is a secret trick - first talk about the positive qualities that are directly related to the desired vacancy.
It is important to be confident and answer clearly. Excitement is indicated by stuttering, the use of filler words, shortness of breath, and too high a timbre. To avoid such an incident, it is necessary to prepare an answer to this question in advance. This will give you confidence, and your speech will sound smoother.
Examples of strengths that can be mentioned:
- communicable;
- purposeful;
- easily trained;
- reliable;
- creative;
- disciplined;
- decisive;
- multifaceted, etc.
Employers value the ability to tell the truth. And this applies not only to answers during an interview. Everyone needs an employee for whom lying is taboo. Therefore, if such a trait exists, it is worth mentioning.
The main rule is to choose 3-5 qualities, no more. It is important that they meet the requirements specified in the job description. It is worth preparing counterarguments confirming the presence of the listed strengths.
It must be remembered that the applicant’s answers during the interview are a reflection of his professionalism. The recruiter is looking for the one who best suits his requirements. It is important for him to see that despite some shortcomings, the person is ready to work to eliminate them.
Why does the employer ask this question?
He wants to get to know you better
You spend most of the interview talking about how good, professional, competent and responsible you are. But it is important for the employer to know about your weaknesses in order to understand how critical they are and whether you can ultimately work together.
He wants to see how you rate yourself
The ability to see your shortcomings and work on them is very important and speaks about your adequacy. It is much more pleasant to deal with a person who is capable of self-criticism and growth than with someone who is sure that he is good in all respects and does not need to grow. For the same reasons, you may be asked to talk about professional failures that befell you in the past.
Linking weaknesses and strengths to the characteristics of professions
Find out what qualities are required for the position
Before making a personal list of positive and negative qualities, you need to carefully read your resume. It indicates what an ideal company employee should be like. Some recruiters even describe this in detail. From this it is worth highlighting the pros and cons for yourself.
Initially, you need to decide on the type of profession. There are 5 of them. They are associated with:
- technology;
- nature;
- other people;
- sign system;
- in an artistic way.
What is suitable for type 1 will absolutely not satisfy the requirements of another category. The rule works here - the weaknesses of one profession can become an advantage for the second.
If the work involves communication, then stress resistance is important. It is necessary for the employee to be able to control his emotions and remain calm in any situation.
When talking about the positive aspects, you need to mention those that will create a competitive advantage over other applicants. When applying for a job as an accountant or salesperson in a small company, the employer is unlikely to pay attention to the candidate’s leadership qualities. But in a company that is just entering the market and plans to actively develop, such an applicant will be very interesting.
# Number of negative aspects in a resume
Expert opinion
Ekaterina Troitskaya
HR manager
The employer is interested in learning about the weak character traits of the applicant, as well as about the strong ones. But writing a 2-page story about yourself is not worth it. It is enough to indicate 3 negative character traits.
If you write more negative aspects in your resume, this may negatively affect your business reputation and raise suspicions of unprofessionalism.
Qualities that shouldn't be mentioned
There are things it's better not to talk about. If a potential employee reports that he is lazy, he is unlikely to be hired. When the position is high, a bad decision would be to talk about the fear of taking responsibility. Such a person blames others for all failures. You can’t rely on him or trust him with anything.
Other things best left unsaid:
- commercialism and thoughts only about money, salary and promotion;
- lack of punctuality;
- addiction to romance novels, gossip, intrigue, etc.
But people who are really serious about finding a job will definitely not mention this. After all, their goal is to find a decent position with a good salary in a prestigious company.
Often, applicants do not talk about bad habits that they cannot give up. Subsequently, such employees take frequent smoking breaks. On holidays, they can drink during working hours and set their colleagues up for it. They are often distracted by phone calls and spread gossip. Some are initiators of conflicts.
It's hard for me to refuse anyone
Some people just don't know how to say “No” - and that's actually a problem. If you find it difficult to refuse a new project or a “trifling” request from a colleague, you may end up taking on too much and not getting anything done.
If you think that your biggest weakness is the inability to refuse, tell about it as a success story: how you took on all the work tasks, almost reached burnout, but caught yourself in time. Now you keep a diary or use an application, where you can immediately see what projects are in work and how busy you are.
State your goals for studying
Once you know your job description and nature, you can note that some of the work and responsibilities require a little more knowledge and skills than you currently possess. Instead of pointing this out as a weakness in an interview, tell the employer that you will definitely work on this problem and learn everything that is necessary. Also, do not forget to indicate that you are very familiar with the rest of the work and will cope with it perfectly.
# Inappropriate negative character traits
Do not indicate disadvantages if they go against direct responsibilities. For example, shyness that is suitable for a programmer is not at all suitable for a fitness trainer. Therefore, the column must be drawn up based on the specifics of the desired position.
Below are examples of a bad combination of qualities and future profession. Please note that for excellent positions, shortcomings are quite acceptable.
