Strengths (and weaknesses)
What are you strengths? This is a question you are bound to get asked in an interview setting. And I never knew how to answer it.
Along with writing cover letters and being able to ‘elevator pitch’ ourselves to the questions on an internship interview, I figured it was important to understand these strengths and be able to ‘back them’ in a way that sounded more legitimate than ‘I think….’ I stumbled upon a learning resource that my university provides known as the Careers Assessments section. Other universities would probably have similar.
This is a section where they have tools for understanding how to develop career-related professional skills. I think there might even be a section on practicing doing pre-recorded interviews (helpful, but yikes!).
In this section they've described how knowing your abilities can help you more clearly define your working role and your career direction. Strengths can be thought about in three dimensions: enjoyment, proficiency, importance (to your current or potential role). Strengths can be grouped into five categories: prime strengths, untapped strengths, necessary skills, under-developed skills, and weaknesses.
These are some of the ‘strengths’ definitions supplied by the Unimelb Careers Assessment centre (all credits to them). Take your pick; there were over 50 provided!
- Teamworking – ‘working well within a team and proactively and positively developing relationships’.
- Solving problems – ‘analysing problems from different perspectives, identifying logical solutions and having a resourceful attitude’.
- Public speaking – ‘leading a presentation or delivering a speech confidently, whilst engaging the audience’.
- Managing your time.
- Working under pressure – ‘performing well with high workloads, tight deadlines, and other stressors’.
- Acting on own initiative – ‘being proactive, working under your own direction and using your own judgement to make decisions’.
- Decision-making – ‘making important and frequent decisions effectively and with confidence’.
- Creativity & innovation – ‘conceiving and developing new ideas and solutions. Thinking ‘outside the box’.
- Verbal communication – ‘articulating your thoughts clearly; considering your audience, the situation and the appropriateness of brevity or elaboration, and using suitable language and expressions.
- Written communication – ‘expressing yourself clearly when writing; using a good range of appropriate vocab, with care over grammar, structure and length, and with consideration for your audience.’
- Leading others – ‘the action of providing direction, guidance and inspiration to others.’
- Managing projects – ‘planning, implementing, evaluating, and leading a project to a successful conclusion’.
- Presentation-building skills – ‘creating presentations that contain the most important points, packed professionally with an appropriate balance of images, numerical data, and text and a story that engages the listener’.
- Managing conflict – ‘being able to tackle conflict and resolve it, whilst remaining calm and professional and being assertive when necessary.’ / Mediating – ‘managing conflict between others and finding mutual solutions’.
- Researching – ‘gathering information and data, investigating systematically and verifying information’.
- Adaptability – ‘adapting positively to changing priorities, new situations, and environments.’
- Crisis management – ‘making sound decisions quickly when under pressure or facing tight deadlines’.
- Motivating others – ‘encouraging others to keep them positive and enthusiastic and providing reasons to move forward’.
- Working in uncertainty – ‘handling and resolving ambiguous or unstructured tasks or problems.’
- Coaching – ‘working with others over a given period to help them develop themselves.’ / Mentoring – ‘guiding those less-experienced and sharing your experience and advice to help them develop themselves’.
- Facilitating – ‘assisting others to create and develop ideas, thoughts, and plans’.
- Listening actively – ‘paying close attention to what another person is saying, asking clarifying questions and rephrasing to qualify understanding’.
- Empathising – ‘being prepared to see something from another’s perspective; understanding and respecting the opinions and POV of others even when you disagree with them’.
- Implementing – carrying out agreed actions and working according to plans and policies.
- Observant – closely monitoring, playing attention and identifying less-obvious details.
I’ve listed several above which I thought were either personally-relevant or pertinent to the job of being an intern doctor. There are of course a plethora of other skills and strengths that certain industries look for, and many people exemplify.
A breakdown of the different categories of strengths
I. Prime skills are the skills that are important to your current role or the role you are looking for; these are also the skills you enjoy using, and are competent or highly-proficient in employing.
II. Necessary skills are the skills that are important to your role but despite being competent in using them, they are not skills you actually enjoy using. These are the types of skills that might weaken your motivation going forward. E.g. solving problems, managing conflict, working under pressure.
III. Untapped strengths are the skills that you enjoy, are competent at, but are not directly relevant to your current role. E.g. negotiating, or designing. These are still important skills because they could be transferable to a different capacity.
IV. Weaknesses are the skills that are important to your role but you dislike using them and they need development. These are the ones that eat away at your confidence and motivation. E.g. public speaking, decision-making, working in uncertainty.
V. Underdeveloped skills are those that are important to your role, you enjoy using them, but they need development. E.g. networking, leading others. They constitute a challenge and may require some effort to rise to.
Some tips from the Careers Assessment centre:
- Prime skills are the ones you should be flagging in cover letters, CVs, interviews as they are your greatest assets.
- Identify what it is about necessary skills that you dislike: is it the tedium of the tasks rather than using those skills, the frequency you have to do those tasks, the isolation or pressure associated with the task? Maybe something to work on with your managers/seniors in the future? These skills can always be ‘bonus’ skills, adjunct to your core strengths.
- Untapped strengths might give you an indication of where your career should be headed, or adapted to. As these are skills you enjoy, there’s no harm in seeing if they can be incorporated into your role or realigned to other projects/tasks.
- Weaknesses may exist because you haven’t developed them enough, and that’s why you dislike them or feel incompetent. Guidance from an experienced person or more opportunities to be trained in that aspect could make up for that deficiency. You might even enjoy managing crises or resolving conflicts after a while!
- Remember that the bottom line is to be genuine. Genuine about what makes you who you are, and how you can contribute in your own valuable way.
- Look for how people excel in your underdeveloped skills; observe, listen and learn.
Helpful link:
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