Most people think we are recruited for our skills, but these can be learned. What’s essential are well developed social skills.  Empathy is an important.

Empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

You can demonstrate this at interview when you are asked questions such as ‘what is your greatest strength?’ or ‘what is your greatest weakness?’ and answer from the perspective of someone who knows you such as your boss, or co-worker.

So instead of saying something along the lines of – I consider my biggest strength to be organisation skills for example when I … instead you do it from a different perspective and you answer could be

“when working on a project with a new team, my boss priased me for my organisational skills. She said that my ability to …. and then include your answer.

Show that you can get into the head and mindset of someone else and how your strength or weakness impacted on an individual or the the team.

And if you are wondering about your level of empathy, here is a link to a quiz.  There are 28 questions. Afterwards you will receive your empathy score, along with feedback and tips.

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/results/empathy

 

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Published On: October 15th, 2019 / Categories: Interviews, Personal Development /

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