What Are Your Biggest Strengths? How to Answer the Most Common Interview Question

“What are your biggest strengths?” – Every Hiring Manager in Every Job Interview

According to Glassdoor, this is the most common interview question Hiring Managers ask during an interview. In other words: you will be asked this question, in some form or another.

So… how should you answer it?

First off, like many straightforward questions, the answer is really easy to overthink. There is no need to put together a five-minute monologue that can double as your audition for Summer Stock (“Coffee is for closers”), listing every skill you’ve ever obtained in extreme detail. On the other hand, you also don’t want to be too general in your answers. Hiring Managers want some tangible information, so just listing a dozen adjectives like “reliable” and “hardworking” isn’t exactly welcomed either. Instead, pick a few examples and back them up with facts and figures that give them some context. For example, maybe your reliability helped you increase your client base by 20% in your last job, or your “hard work” helped save your department thousands of dollars during Q3 of last year. These examples should be relevant to the role you are interviewing for, so the numbers can resonate with the Hiring Manager in relation to their specific needs in their department.

One last thing: before you start adding context to your answers, it’s important to remember that Hiring Managers may have follow-up questions that related to these numbers. Be ready to go a little further in-depth in your answers, so if they ask how your department saved money, you want to have an answer ready.