What are your best strength?

Why ask this question: 
Every job candidate is ready for this one because it gets so much attention in the career press. Job candidates are also aware that this query is used as a lead-in to a natural follow-up question (which is much tougher to answer): ‘‘What’s your greatest weakness?’’

 Still, This question seems like a softball lob, but be prepared. You don't want to come across as egotistical or arrogant. Neither is this a time to be humble.

Most Effective Answer:  
You know that your key strategy is to first uncover your interviewer's greatest wants and needs before you answer questions. And from Question 1 (Tell us about yourself?), you know how to do this.

Prior to any interview, you should have a list mentally prepared of your greatest strengths. You should also have, a specific example or two, which illustrates each strength, an example chosen from your most recent and most impressive achievements.

The better you know yourself, the better you can sell yourself to a prospective employer when you’re on the spot in an interview.

You can prepare a list of your best features under the following headings:

• My greatest areas of knowledge.
• My greatest personality strengths.
• The things I do best.
• My strongest skills.
• My key accomplishments.

You should, have this list of your greatest strengths and corresponding examples from your achievements so well committed to memory that you can recite them cold after being surprised awake at 3:00AM.

Then, once you uncover your interviewer's greatest wants and needs, you can choose those achievements from your list that most effective match up.

As a general guideline, the 10 most desirable traits that all employers love to see in their employees are:

• Confident-healthy-a leader.
• Honesty-integrity-a decent human being.
• Good fit with corporate culture-someone to feel comfortable with-a team player who meshes well with interviewer's team.
• Likeability-positive attitude-sense of humor.
• Good communication skills.
• Loyalty-enthusiasm to walk the extra mile to achieve excellence.
• Definiteness of purpose-clear goals.
• Enthusiasm-high level of motivation.
• A proven track record as an achiever-especially if your achievements match up with the employer's greatest wants and needs.
• Intelligence-management "know-how".

Example: "As an area manager with xyz industry, I have excellent organisation skills and really good attention to detail – I am not the sort of person who does things by one-half. I also believe that I have good communication skills in dealing with not only external customers but also all members of the internal team –from the senior managers to the junior researchers".

Continue to… InterviewQuestion 3 - What are your greatestweaknesses?