Key Strengths And Self Describing Skills Create Job Winning Descriptions

Understanding your Key Strengths and being able to talk comfortably and convincingly about what makes YOU the ideal candidate to hire is one of the most important self describing skills you must master because it also enables you to answer the job interview questions applicants commonly have to answer.

These self describing skills make a great interview self introduction & are the basis of job winning personal descriptions. This can apply to your interview itself, the words you use in a cover letter, or the way you write your CV or resume. The other obvious point is when it comes to your annual performance appraisal, the more you can describe your personal strong points, the better.

You can now download the "Phrases for Performance Appraisals Guidebook" and use the exact phrases that professionals use to write their concise and powerful appraisals

Many of us have a natural reticence to talk about our achievements and strong points, but when you want to convince a prospective employer to hire you, you must be able to describe your own strengths in terms that help you to be picked. See the examples at the bottom of this page.

So often, in my coaching practice, when I'm trying to find out about whether my client understands her own key strengths I generally, at some point ask this very straightforward and simple question:

"What are you good at?"

I ask this question purely to establish if they have already thought through this most important question and what it means to create job winning descriptions of their personality.

Some have, but more often they haven't and the answer usually involves lots of head-scratching, umms and arrhs and then quite often a monologue on what they're NOT good at!!

The point is that you need to know your own key strengths AND be able to talk about them! Also refer to the page on strengths and weaknesses to help you cover that particular issue.

Self Introduction And Key Strengths

When you come to the question of how to find hidden jobs this self-describing skill and being able to talk about your personal attributes and key strengths is absolutely crucial. What you will soon discover is that Self Introduction Is The Key To Interview Success and the key elements of a good interview self-introduction are:

Knowing Your Key Strengths
Being Able To Describe Your Skills
Illustrating Your Key Attributes
Creating A Confident Personal Attributes Statement

And The Answer Is...

So, your answer to this question "What Are You Good At?" should be your key strengths statement which we talked about in personal marketing - let me remind you.

A "Key Strengths" statement is a summary of your most powerful skills and attributes. You should also check the key qualities and personal attributes every organization wants to see in it's candidates. This will help you to understand the 9 Key Qualities and Personal Attributes every organization looks for and how you can display your Key Qualities as work strengths.

5 Key Strengths

Regardless of the industry, the company you work for or the job you perform, you should try to incorporate these 5 key strengths in your performance appraisals. There is such a strong emphasis on these because they very often form the essence of a company’s corporate culture, and if you can demonstrate them, you will be seen as being compatible, someone who will fit in with the organization.

Focus on customer satisfaction: describe how you contribute to enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty for the company’s long-term growth.
Teamwork and collaboration: highlight how you build long term relationships with other internal and external teams and work collaboratively to achieve organizational goals.
Communication Skill: emphasize your willingness to listen to and adopt new ideas, or to try out alternative approaches.
Interpersonal skills: stress your ability to work with different people and at different all levels within the organization.
Adaptability to change: illustrate how you have been able to adapt to changes in the organization or industry sector.

Understanding your interests, skills, and attitudes will increase your confidence and help you sell your key strengths to a target employer. Increased self-confidence sends a positive message to employers. The key to success is selecting and supporting the skills that directly respond to the specific requirements outlined by potential employers in their adverts or person specifications which they usually produce as part of their job descriptions.

The Key Strengths statement:

Highlights your most important skills and abilities
Differentiates you from others
Avoids generalisations
Provides examples of your achievements
Spoken naturally should take no more than two minutes

Of course at interview, the question may take many different forms:

"What are your main strengths?"

"why should we hire you?"

"what do you think makes you the best candidate?"

"convince me you're the right person for us"

"how do your skills match our particular needs?"

As with all your Presentation Statements it should be so well rehearsed that it sounds completely spontaneous.

Example #1 Of A Key Strengths Statement

This example I've given you here should get you thinking so give your own Key Strengths statement some thought now using the tips I've given you.

"I have very good communication skills; I work well either leading or being part of a team and I am self-motivated and capable of working on several tasks at once.
As a leader of small teams I involve people in the decisions so that they feel involved and ensure they have the opportunity to contribute to tasks facing the team. I manage the information, plan and organise and make the decisions as required.
With my strong communication skills, I have been able to motivate the staff to higher standards of performance meaning we have also helped our profits figures through increased sales and tighter cost-control.
Alongside this I have encouraged innovation and my team has produced several very good ideas for new products, services and markets. As an example the new widget has taken off in Eastern Europe and is contributing 7% of profits in less than 18 months.
Most importantly I actively seek to develop members of my team for their own careers sake but also for the future of the business itself. This means I also look for personal development opportunities to ensure my skills are kept up to date."

Example #2 Of A Key Strengths Statement

If you refer to the sample CVs and resumes, a sample CV for a Chief Engineer, the statement from him might go like this:

"I have very good communication skills and work across all departments to ensure that issues are identified and practical solutions are prepared. Coupled with my project management skills and my hands-on leadership style I am able to consistently deliver and commission projects on time and to budget.
I am focused on internal and external customer's needs, rather than purely functional needs and I apply specialist skills in continuous improvement and world class manufacturing to increase efficiency, reduce waste and losses due to downtime.
As Chief Engineer I have initiated and managed strategic change programmes and implemented effective quality improvement programs all the way through to successful local level implementation. This has led to savings of £750k per annum and helps to maintain the position and financial strength of my employer".

These key strengths statements naturally answer many of the interviewers questions whilst being reassuring in content. You will find though, that they will create new questions for the interviewer, so be aware that you must be able to substantiate everything you claim.

Try working on your own statement using your own words and skills, blending them together to create a strong "key strengths" statement to meet your needs.

You'll be surprised how often you use this one!! If you are still struggling with it perhaps you need to brush up on your Public Speaking skills?

Key Strengths And Self Marketing

Self-marketing, or 'selling' yourself; writing cover letters and great resumes / CVs are all skills that most people could do better with the right information. These self describing skills make a great interview self introduction & are the basis of job winning personal descriptions. This can apply to your interview itself, the words you use in a cover letter, or the way you write your CV or resume. The other obvious point is when it comes to your annual performance appraisal.

You can now download the "Phrases for Performance Appraisals Guidebook" and use the exact phrases that professionals use to write their concise and powerful appraisals

Read more about how to describe your: Personal Attributes and your Key Qualities in order to Manage Your Career

I recommend a very good way to build up your key strengths and that is with a Personal Development plan; or go on to read more about how to formulate your own key strengths offer.

Return to Your Career Change home page.

You might also want to Find Your Strengths with the Strengths Finder 2.0 and read about how the Employee Review can affect your job security.

Looking for something more specific about your key strengths?

Perhaps you need an answer to an interview question? A CV or Resume layout? How to start Networking? Or some ideas of your options?

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