Discovering your strengths and likes

By Mrityunjay Kumar

So how do you discover your strengths and likes?

One of the most interesting book on this topic is Marcus Buckingham’s Now, Discover your Strengths. The book describes 34 strengths and provides a test that can identify your strengths for you (this is claimed to be further refined, see here). Idea of the book is that once you know your strengths, you can align your work (or somone else’s) which leverages those strengths. You can use this to find your strengths.

However, there are aspects of your strengths that may not fit these descriptions, or for that matter any description, because only you know yourself the best. Similarly, what you like to do and what you don’t like, can not be accurately described by any test, you are the best judge. Therefore, it is best to try and interrogate/introspect yourself to find answer to the question I posed above.

Here are some ways I have found useful to get answers to some of these questions:

• Your happiest moments of life (as it relates to your career): Most of the time, you are happy when you are doing what you like doing. Think of those times and see what you did that brought about that state of happiness. For example, if you were happiest when you published in your college magazine, maybe you like to write.
• Your accomplishments: These may be pretty good indicators of your strengths. Make sure you analyze them and see what strengths you can identify. You may have some talent you haven’t noticed.
• How others know you: Adjectives people use for you (assuming you can get them to tell you honestly!) is a good indicator of what they perceive as strength and weakness in you. Encourage them to talk to you about their impressions of you and you will discover a lot about yourself.

Getting to know your weaknesses and your dislikes is equally important, and above questions can help you get to know those too. Once you have a list of potential strengths and likes, write them down and see if they make sense.

Do you know your strengths and your likes? If you have other tips about discovering them, please post your comments or drop me a note.

About : IIM Ahmedabad, By : bellthecat

What is the level of preps reqd on the acads, both college and school?
Also, what all I shld read for qs related to my work ex...

Well. ideally, u should be prepared with each and every thing u can think of...i mean, would u like to take any chance with the calls like A/B/C ? neway, looking at your experience, i would suggest focusing on work related stuff first...n by dat i mean
(i) Knowing in good detail about not just what you, but your organization did; about the industry u were in; your contributions in specific details etc.
(ii) Knowing above things from an academic angle...the subjects which helped you in working etc.

Being an engg.; knowing ur math and physics well is definitely expected and i dont think one would have to "prepare" for that. Interviewers generally do not go beyond basic stuff in calculus nad physics.

All the best!

About : IIM Ahmedabad, By : ismbaneeded

Quote:

Originally Posted by IAYF now talking of the next step, I have categorized the things to do in the following manner : 1. Clarity in future goals (Why MBA n stuff) 2. Current Affairs and General Awarenes 3. Work-ex related 4. Academics related Please add any particular aspect that I have missed out on... have many more queries for the seniors but, to start with would like their suggestions on the approach to prepare for the Acads part...

That is exactly how I categorized my approach.

Do add these to the list

5) Personal stuff ..which includes all that you have done and achieved in life..any award you have won..any other special achievement...any special place you visited..your likes dislikes strengths and weaknesses, parents educational and proffessional background....( I had to learn a lot about the Indian Army..and any other thing which you think has played a major role in your life..

6) Extra Currics - Enlighten yourself with every possible aspect of any extra curric activity you are going to mention in the form. For e.g. I wrote a lot about following football. So I put in effort to know about various leagues in the world, status of football in India, current standings of EPL. The profs will ask questions to make sure that you havent written just to make your form look impressive.

7) Have GD / Informal discussions regualrly on current topics.

For Acads, after reading previous GD / PI experiences..I shortlisted some topics ..
Probability, Matrices and Det. , Stats , Integration and Diff. - X11th Level
Engineering - Pick up 2 3 fav subjects and refresh your concepts...You need to know the basics
If you have a good amount of work ex, say 3.5 years and above, you probably wont be grilled on acads.

One more thing, when you are in preparation of your PI do not take the risk of writing any false achievements to make your resume look good. The profs here are extremely smart.
Aaram se pata chal jaayega unko. be genuine, be yourself. I think thats the key.

All the best.

About : IIM Ahmedabad, By : prem_ravi

ONE BIG QUESTION (for PI Preps)......
WHO ARE YOU?????
Start framming answer for this question..Question may sound funny, but the fact is this single question takes care of most of your PI questions are answered...
How does it work...
WHO ARE YOU??? includes lots of sub questions..Who are you as a person, what are your characters, How do you react to situations, What are your strengths/weaknesses (Remember weakness is something which are trying to overcome by working on it),What is your aim in life (next 5 years),what have done to the society, what is your hobby/interests & soon..The moment you start thinking on those lines, you will have 10 more questions popping up to be answered...This ananlysis will not only help you in your PI, but through out your life as a person..You will give convincing answers even without preparations..when you say hobby, you should know in & out..Wikipedia would be a nice source...
Let us look at what I did.....
Now I did this analysis much before CAT...then Singing is my hobby, my favourite singer is SPB..I garnered the complete history of SPB, I had 4 gold medals in Badminton (I garnered the complete details about the Indian Players, why are we unable to shine in the International arena & soon), One of the IIMA faculty had bought s/w from our Ahd branch..Now I learnt why had he bought, what is the NGO(for which he bought) all about, the credentials of the Professor etc....Then I love Matrices..Learnt in & out of it...
I had collected various appreciation letters from professors, customers etc.....
Net Net...IIMs want Men who know themselves & not Boys
Ps: Lets have a conferrence chat if required (all 3 team call getters...Me an exception ..hehehehe)

About : IIM Ahmedabad, By : zyanzaphod

Basic fundaes to avoid repetition:

GD - has been Case based only and extends to one page at max.Will be extremely straightforward (no brilliant deductions/analysis required, its mostly about communication ) You get about 5 mins to think, 20 mins to discuss and a written summary at the end. Most people do not finish the summary and it is commonly believed that this negatively impairs your chances for a final call. There are about 9-10 members to a GD.

PI - An Ahd interview is in most cases all about 'the form', so spend maximum time on it..The A & I forms are similar and Loooong and will be reaching you soon.

And then some more fundae....

1) Find a decent set of people through PG or otherwise(classes) and practice cases. You can find a lot of cases on threads of previous years.

2) In the first couple of days, spend free time at office 'productively' by looking through the GD-PI experiences of the last couple of years. You can also read the last year's queries thread for more 'gyaan'. That will give you a general idea of what to expect.

As ismbaneeded posted, last years thread is http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-an...periences.html (IIM Ahmedabad GD/PI experiences for 2007-2009 batch)
Other links for previous years are here
http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/cat-an...periences.html (Links for GD/PI Experiences)

3) There is a set of 50+ HR/personals questions along with an pretty comprehensive article posted here. Ideally , you should have an idea of what to talk about for most of them.

http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/prep-r....html#post3458 (Interview tips - Must read)

4) Talk to as many seniors/coaching classes heads as you can find. You can stop, like I did, when they start repeating themselves

5) As far as possible, do post on the thread rather than PM'ing. It avoids repetition. And as you can see, there are enough people around to reply soon

6) Don't worry about your acads/extracurrics/cat score etc. If you excelled at them, good for you. If not, you can hardly do anything about it now, can you? Focus on what you know you are good at and portray that well. Its enough.

Phew, first round of gyaan-spouting dispensed with! ..Do pour in your queries.More fundae specific to gd/pi soon.

Cheers,
Anand