HOW TO ACE YOUR ANSWER TO “WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?”
If you’re interviewing for a technical job whether it’s in analytics, engineering, software development or anything else, you need to be prepared to talk about your technical background.
Interviewers are looking for you to articulate what you’ve accomplished and what your skills are in business terms, and they’re also looking to see how much you can engage them on this content.
It’s really common to be asked the interview question, “Tell me about yourself.”
And while you might get that question, you might also get this, “Tell me about your technical background question.”
It might kick off the interview.
In that case, the interviewer is really looking to loosen you up, get some ideas of things you’ve done before, and get some ideas of what other questions they want to ask you.
Maybe it happens a little later in the interview.
Treat it the same way.
You’re trying to engage them, tease them with enough information that they really want to know more about you.
So, what’s the best way to talk about your technical background?
We’re going to use the method of talking about your present, your past, and then your future.
By using this method, you hook in the interviewer with what’s going on now, what you’ve accomplished, then you tell a little bit of your backstory, and you connect with why you want this new position that you’re interviewing for.
We’re really looking to not just regurgitate your resume.
You don’t want to just say the same things that they’ve had in writing and probably looked at a handful of times.
You’re really trying to create a story.
You want to be really engaging.
You want it to have a flow to it.
This isn’t just bullet point, bullet point, bullet point.
That can be especially tricky on a technical position because you might feel like you just have a checklist to go down through.
We can make it really engaging which helps draw the interviewer in.
That’s going to make you stand out, whether you realize it or not, the more you can build some rapport and connection with your interviewer, even if it’s subconscious, they’re going to say, “I really liked this person.
I really connect with this person.”
And it can also give you some edge over other candidates, especially if technically you’re on par with each other.
Every good story starts out with a captivating intro, and your career technical story isn’t any different.
When you’re talking about your technical background, think through the summary of everything that you’ve done in your career.
How can you sum it up?
How have you saved money, generated revenue, improved processes?
Talk about that, and talk about that in terms of your present.
Here’s what a sample response for the first part of this, the present, might sound like.
“I’m an experienced big data analyst who has led the implementation of new analytics platforms and driven data visualization projects across large organizations.
My work has led to innovative breakthroughs in the industry.”
This is a fairly high-level response, but highlights some key accomplishments that you’ve had in your career.
Now that you have their attention, move to the past and talk a bit about your experience so far.
Talk about technically how you’ve progressed, especially if you can show a growth in your skill levels.
Focus your story on past situations and experiences that connect as much as possible to this new position.
Look at the job description for ideas.
What are they talking about?
Are they looking for skills in certain programming languages, or are you having certain problems that you’re trying to solve.
Focus your response in this area.
Your response in this area talking about your past, might sound like this: “I started my career as an analyst at a company x where I standardized the analytics tools to Python which also enabled a cleaner back end data structure.
I moved into a senior analyst role where I continued to develop my coding skills and also focused on increasing our use of data visualization using Qlikview, Power BI, and SQL.
I’ve also been involved in the industry to help develop training and network with others to engage and continuously help me improve my skills.”
Now it’s time to move onto the future and talk about why you’re interested in this role and why you’re a great candidate.
This part of your response about your technical background might sound like this: “I really enjoyed working with all of these areas of analytics and am looking forward to driving more innovation.”
This part of your answer also highlights to the employer that you understand what’s expected in a new position and how you’re looking forward to addressing it.
This whole answer was fairly short.
I think maybe six sentences or so.
It gave a complete synopsis of your experience at the high level that talked specifically about what that employer was looking for.
Expect that your interviewer is going to ask you additional questions off of this, probably more detail about specific thing you mentioned during this answer.
Make sure that whatever you answer, you’re comfortable going into more detail about later on.
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