Prepare for Interviews: Understanding Yourself

Strengths

The best way to prepare for interviews is to know ourselves! Our strengths, weakness, passion and values play an important role when identifying potential employers and doing well in interviews. This assignment has been created for you to reflect on better understanding who you are.

Confidence in an interview comes from knowing who we are, what we are good at, and what not, and being comfortable talking about both.

This assignment is for you to take a moment to reflect – it is NOT to create perfect answers for interviews. You will use your responses to prepare for creating your personal brand as well as for your interview exam in this course and, of course, for actual interviews.

Write your response below each question. Save as a pdf or word file. Submit on Brightspace.

STRENGTHS 

1. What do you like best about yourself? What makes you unique from others around you and is your greatest strength? How do you know you are good at it?

2. What was a recent project that you are most proud of and why?

3. What was the most important role you played in a group setting?

4. Describe an obstacle/barrier you overcame/resolved/fixed and how you did it.  Please include the result or IMPACT it made for you. How did it change things for you?

5. How would a previous manager/colleague/classmate/friend describe you if they were to introduce you to others as related to a future job you might apply for? What are you known for among the people who know you best and why?

WEAKNESS

6. Do you have one? List 1 weakness and how it impacts (or impacted) your life. What steps are you taking (or have taken) to overcome this? Friendly Reminder, this assignment is meant for YOU to understand to take a moment to reflect. We are not trying here to create a response for an interview. We will do that later in this course J 

7. Tell me about a project/task that failed (or did not go as well as planned) because of the way you handled it.

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PASSION

8. Do you have one? If money were not an issue what would you do? If you won the lottery and did not need to work, how would you spend your time?

9. What kinds of stories in the news/social media/podcasts capture your interest? What are you drawn to?

VALUES

10. Do you know your values? What is it that is important to you? Identify a time/s when you felt fulfilled and satisfied. What personal need or value was met?

IDEAL EMPLOYER  

11. What kind of employer would you like to work for/with? What kind of work environment do you like?

CONCLUSION/REFLECTION

12. What are you taking away from this exercise? Did anything become clearer and/or surprise you?