Here’s an exercise you can work on.
Get your notebook and write ten things about you that you see as a disadvantage.
It could be a professional disadvantage or a personal disadvantage.
Either way you need to sort your personal issues or else they will hold you back in your interview and in your life as you face opportunities.
We also have that little voice in our head that tells us we’re not good enough.
You need to know how to answer it by saying.
Thanks for sharing.
I would like to test it myself and see what I can learn from the experience for future opportunities.
I call this the art of the comeback.
Sometimes you (or someone else) points out a disadvantage (often a past one that you should be over with) and use it to stop you from moving forward.
Please don’t stop.
That person is not against you.
You are being tested if you can handle moving forward.
Keep going and learn from the experience.
For this exercise I wrote my own as examples.
If you have a website I would love to see what you wrote as your answers.
If you don’t then I hope you leave your answers in the comments to share with others.
Knowing yourself and how to use what you have and do what you can is the key. It’s my idea so I’ll go first.
That’s what makes me unique.
A lot of Filipinos I know settle (grow stagnant) or stop learning after they receive their diploma.
I didn’t.
I’m self-motivated and I learn on my own through reading from personal experimentation and people better than me.
This gives me a four-year head start in the business world compared to everybody in my batch and as a result I also have an interesting combination of skills my peers and previous bosses told me that they couldn’t find anywhere else.
By the way what got you interested in considering me for the position?
I’m a kinesthetic learner.
I learn with my body and from experience.
I don’t always recognize patterns and connect the dots immediately.
But when I learn the ropes I tend to master them to the point that I can do it while I sleep.
I think its a disadvantage because I sometimes think a thousand thoughts per second.
Sometimes I think of a hundred ways to make a plan work and several back up plans.
I also come up with ideas to tweak things and make things better.
Pick one that works here and there and so on.
So nothings ever permanent.
I can’t sit still and I always have to tinker with something.
At an early age I was in touch with the challenges of reality.
I wasn’t raised in a sheltered home.
I saw and experienced problems most parents kept to themselves.
I knew that money wasn’t unlimited and had to look for ways to earn at an early age.
This led me to make a combination of ideal and practical choices like wanting to become the perfect partner and be self-sufficient.
I didn’t start out with a wealthy family so I’m not fixed on having a high maintenance life.
They say experiencing poverty brings out creativity to overcome tough times.
I have a lot of ideas but I can guarantee that they are practical and actionable. (not out of this world and philosophical)
That’s true.
I loved math but it’s mostly one way.
Except if I’m counting money.
I live an hour away from here which gives me an advantage of being forced to start earlier and not leave the house at the last minute.
I also get a couple of hours each day to decompress and leave work at the office and leave personal problems at home.
I did better at other things like creating art, making connections, written correspondence, out of the box problem solving and eliminating unnecessary tasks.
At school that translated to drawing in class, being talkative, passing notes in class, not following instructions and not copying notes (the reality is I summarized notes into keywords and sometimes hieroglyphic like drawings and memorized it).
It took me a while to lean this task but the thing is I handled this task enough times to know the ins and outs of it and I wasn’t unrealistic to get this right the first time because it is the first time I handled a task like this.
My previous experience was
If you give me a chance and a little help I can show you what it’s like to have someone on your team who mastered this process.
I see all work opportunities as partnerships.
With that in mind the engagement should be mutually beneficial.
If not the I would have to disengage the agreement or let my employer know that the relationship is not working out.
These answers are not guaranteed to get me through the interview.
Sometimes it does if I answer confidently.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Make it a practice to think of a better way to answer these questions.
What are your thoughts?
Thank you for reading this far and thanks for your attention.
I am praying for your success. God bless!
If you made it this far, you should introduce yourself.
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