Here’s another question that stumps many job-seekers. What are you best at? Most people underestimate themselves and think they’re not the good at anything, others have trouble figuring out what to say to an interviewer.
Trust yourself, you are the best at something and it doesn’t have to be work related. Let’s say you’re the best at reading books. Talk about how you’ve read forty books in a year and took notes.
You can even say you’re best at singing or doing makeup.
You don’t have to be the best in the world but rather best within your group of friends. If an interviewer asks “Are you the best in the nation at X?” Don’t say “yes” because that’s a straight up lie and you’ll come off as arrogant. There’s always someone better and more experienced than you, but out of all your friends and family you are best at X.
How do you figure out what you’re best at? As with any common interview question, you must prepare an answer ahead of time.
The two “I’s”
- Identify a skill
- Illustrate a story
Tell the interviewer what you can do and what you’ve already done.
For example, I’m the best at having infinite patience because I work at a swim school teaching young children.
So I’ve identified a skill, patience.
Now let’s illustrate my story.
One of our students, I’ll call him Sam, was very reluctant to get in the pool by himself. Sam had been with us for three weeks and he wasn’t making any progress.
At this point, I’ve already tried everything. I bribed him with stickers, toys, swim rings, none of which worked. But then I had an idea. Why not play a game? So I made a ring toss game with the toys we had and showed Sam how much fun I had. After a few games, Sam started smiling again and decided to hop into the pool.
Practice your story
Every skill needs to be sharpened and I’d suggest doing the following exercise:
- Record yourself telling your story.
- Transcribe it faithfully word-for-word. This includes “umms”
- Edit it as if it were a paper.
- Rerecord the polished version.
- Repeat if necessary.
