Personal Strengths And Weaknesses
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Personal Strengths and Weaknesses
What are my personal strengths and weaknesses? When I think about this question, the first thing that comes to mind is a job interview. I, like most people, find this simple question to be the most stressful moment of any interview. I want to give an answer that is imaginative but does not give the interviewer a bad impression of myself. In this paper, I will describe my strengths and weaknesses as I would to a job interviewer. I will give specific examples of my strengths and place a positive spin on my weaknesses.
When deciding which strengths you want describe to an interviewer, you should make a list, choose three to five of those strengths that match the job posting, and give specific examples of that strength (Martin, 2005). I can easily tell you that my greatest strengths are the core values that I was instilled with during my service with the United States Air Force. Integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all [I] do (USAF, 1997); these are my strengths that I bring to every job or task I do.
Integrity first refers to a willingness to do what is right, even when no one is looking (USAF, 1997). Integrity also means optimizing your job tasks and assisting coworkers in optimizing their job tasks. For a manager, integrity is motivating your team so that they understand the importance of their job so that they are willing to do their jobs, even when you are not looking.
Service before self refers to the fact that professional duties take precedence over personal desires (USAF, 1997). In the business setting, service before self means finishing tasks or jobs before you go home at the end of your shift and not leaving them for someone else to finish up. If it is Friday afternoon and I have been given a task, I will always finish my job then, even if it means starting my weekend late. Service before self also means that you should never call in to work just because you do not feel like coming in. I have never taken a personal day at any job I have ever worked.
Excellence in all [I] do refers to the development of a sustained passion for continuous improvement and innovation (USAF, 1997). One example of this is my attending the University of Phoenix; I wish to improve my job skills and marketability. In the business setting, this also means that if there is ever a task that I did not complete to the standards of my manager, I will always redo the task on my personal time.
When examining your weaknesses, even during a job interview, you should never consider your weaknesses as a negative factor. The best way to handle describing your weaknesses to a job interviewer is to minimize the possible negative of the weakness and emphasize the positive. One way of doing this is to select a trait and come up with a solution to overcome your weakness (Martin, 2005). My personal weaknesses are that I tend to be a detail-oriented person, that I do not have confidence in my grammar skills, and that my interpersonal skills are not as refined as I would like them to be.
When working on any project, I am a detail-oriented person who can get hung up on the specific particulars of the project. This also goes back to my time in the Air Force when I was instilled with a duty to pay close attention to detail. The big picture was something that someone else took care of. Unfortunately, this trait followed me into the civilian sector and causes me to have a hard time seeing how the different parts of a project fit together to form the big picture. To counterbalance this, I always make it a point to have someone on my team who can see how everything fits together to make the big picture I do this so that the team will succeed in their current project.