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In today’s time when the competition among B school applicants has become neck tight, it is extremely important that one is aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses. And whether you are being interviewed for a Business School or for a job, the interviewer is bound to ask you the three dreaded questions:

• What are your strengths?
  What are your weaknesses?
  What have to done to overcome your weaknesses?

First things first, what are strengths?

Strengths are a combination of talent and behaviour that a person is born with and cultivates over a period of time. Here is a list of skills and strengths that an individual may have:

A lot of people confuse strengths with skills but the point noteworthy here is that skills can be learnt over a period of time but strengths can only be nurtured. For example, if you don’t know how to cook you might take a cooking class and learn it. But probably you wouldn’t be able to learn wittiness or far sightedness because they are the gifts of nature and would become stronger with life experiences and time.

On a general chit chat sessions with TG, I asked him to tell me about my weaknesses and strengths. After pondering over the question for a while, he said,” You are a moody worker, this means that you cannot adjust into daily routine work kind of environment. The good part is that your moody nature works in your favour. You work in bursts of energy and whenever you work, you produce quality work.”

Me,” Is this my strength or a weakness?

TG,” Actually both. Your moody nature is working in your favour because you are an entrepreneur but if you get employed under someone else, you would not be able come up to your full potential.”

Me,” Hmmm..So basically I have turned my moody nature (read: my weakness) into my strength. What else?

TG,” Correct. Your biggest strength is that you have strong interpersonal skills and that is the reason, a lot of people open their hearts to you.”

Me(laughs), ” This means I am in a perfect profession and if ever someone asks about my weakness, I can really brag about my moody nature. On second thoughts, I always thought that my biggest weakness was that I couldn’t delegate my work, and most of time this backfired and I ended up having too much on my plate.

TG(smiles),” You can actually brag about this part of your personality as well. Think about it.”

The only reason to put this conversation is to bring forward the point when a B School or an organization is interviewing you, they would want you to prove that you are worthy of being admitted and that you are aware of your weaknesses and either willing to fix them or make them work in your favour.

Once a student told me that he had speech impediment(read: weakness), which acted as the biggest hurdle in his communication and interpersonal skills. His willingness to excel (read: strength) made him anchor state level quizzes at one point of time. He said that he still remembers the sound of applaud that came from among the audience.

With Business School interviews already going on, what is the best way to answer this question?

Follow these tips to answer the strengths and weaknesses question.

I AM A PERFECTIONIST. Yeah, why not? The moment you say this there are two phases of personality that become clear.

1. You are a liar. Admission committee members are aware that no HUMAN is perfect and they would appreciate it if you come up with honest answers. You can say,” I have problems delegating my work because I think that I can do things better than others. This is essentially a weakness because most of the time I end up getting overloaded with work. To overcome this weakness, I have taken time management course and have learnt effective delegation techniques.”
2. By telling that you are perfectionist, you are bringing forward your ‘frog in the well’ kind of personality forward. In essence, you have no clue about what it is like working at developing your skills and you are too egoistic to even consider about improving upon your weakness.

Always remember that it is OK to have a weakness, you just have to make sure that your weakness doesn’t come as a hurdle in performing a task. Your ability to discuss weakness is a strength, Business Schools look for candidates who are self aware and are willing to work on their weakness. Talk about the steps that you have taken to minimize your imperfection and how overcoming it has benefitted you in becoming a better person.

I LOVE TO TALK- Oh yes we know that you love to talk but we are here to admit you in a B School, so can you tell us a little more about your professional life than about dangers of dating a co worker or about your bad experience when one of your colleagues got drunk right before the presentation? Lesson learned: Keep your answer to the point and related to work related. Admission committee is looking forward to hear anecdotes about your leadership qualities, team work efforts, or communication skills. Provide specific examples from your work and life where you have demonstrated your leadeship/ team work/ analytic/ managerial skills. Keep the hot gossip for friends.

I HAVE EXCELLED IN COOKING: So? What has it got to do with doing an MBA?  You may bring forward your ability to work under pressure or professional expertise by stating this but don’t come up with bizarre non sequitur. Admissions committee is there to select the future managers so, they are seeking qualities such as leadership, team work, empathy, patience, co ordination, ethics, reliability etc.

OH STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES! I KNOW THEM LIKE THE BACK OF MY HAND: One of my friends is a Relationship Manager- North India for a particular company. I asked her one day the reason for her success. This was how she answered, “Ummm… I think it’s my people handling skills. May be I am friendly and a good communicator. Actually, I am not sure.” We laughed then but on a serious note, for me, it is a negative answer.  I was looking forward for a confidant and clear answer. Lesson learned: Everyone has strengths and weaknesses but it takes time to identify them. Prepare strength and weaknesses questions in advance so that you have balanced answers ready with you and you come up with answers that prove that you will make a good fit in the incoming class.

I AM A TEAM PLAYER/ TRUE LEADER: Dear Business School Applicant,

We would like to tell you that every applicant has learnt two important phrases to impress us :”team player” and “true leader”. We would also like to tell you that we are quite bored of hearing these words and they don’t seem to impress us anymore. If you have any behavioural skill or experience on how you handled a conflict while working in a team kind of story, we’d like to know that. We are open to hear about your qualities from diverse backgrounds such as extra curricular activities, projects, work etc.

Regards,

Admissions Committee

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