Reinvent The Self!

 

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

It clearly has 2 answers. Honest and manipulative. These 2 are strengths in their own respect! If I answer it looking at the job description before, my answer would likely be manipulative. It might be possible that I am “filtering” my strengths and weaknesses to suit to the Job by looking at the job description before. But in essence, I am being manipulative here. In fact, this question is asked to me for a “filtering” purpose. I think manipulative people most likely stay manipulative throughout. This could be their ‘weakness’ which they would like to treasure as their ‘strength’! I feel, as they are more likely to #GetHired, similar is the likelihood that they #GetFired.
I would always like to answer this with #honesty. In that I am not just ‘answering’ the question but ‘demonstrating’ my core strength of being honest.
Nowadays, data plays a pivotal role in any kind of decision making. So, I try to collect as much data as possible to explain why I think what I think to be the strength or weakness. Data might be in any form, like, my experience, my project, my GitHub repo, my awards, certifications, and recognitions so far, etc. However, as in every case, data alone is not sufficient to see a complete picture.
As sharing data is important, it is equally important to share my views about how I perceive my so called strengths and weaknesses. Because we know a strength in one context is a weakness in the other. There’s a soft classification for every quality. And it might become a futile or fruitless exercise to do a hard classification of any quality strictly into either a strength or a weakness. It is therefore very essential to share my views on this.
Lastly, it is always nice to explain how I am going to work with my strengths and weaknesses. I need to share whether my focus is on minimizing weaknesses, maximizing strengths and why I think what is important.
The question assumes that I have already explored myself enough to talk about the strengths and weaknesses. In reality, I need to continually keep on exploring myself more and more. This exercise will uncover more qualities in me which are open to be classified as strengths or weaknesses. The landscape of my qualities changes with time.

In short, I need to be #honest to answer, #open to self-criticism, #ready to confront the challenges of the job and #willing to learn as I continue to work. Ultimately, to me, these qualities determine my path!