Strengths and Weaknesses

The first thing you need to do when starting the job-hunting process is a self-assessment of your own strengths and weaknesses. This process will help you identify the skills, qualifications, experience, knowledge and personal characteristics that employers are looking for.

L ISTENING 1a. . Listen to two friends, Federico and Jack, talking about Federico’s strengths and weaknesses. Answer the following questions.

1. What has Federico recently decided to do?

2. Why has he made this decision?

3. What does Federico claim to be good at?

4. What would Federico really like to be able to do?

5. What is Federico doing in order to achieve this aim?

1 B. Listen again and underline the personal characteristics in the box that best describe Federico.

Creative impatient disorganized flexible impatient reliable successful

SPEAKING 2. In pairs discuss your answers using evidence from the conversation to support your opinion.

VOCABULARY 3. Match the personal characteristics (1-6) to the questions (a-f)

c reative	Do you always do what you say you’ll do?
Decisive	Are you good at getting other people to agree with you?
Flexible	Are you good at making your mind quickly?
organised	Are you able to plan ahead successfully?
persuasive	Are you able to cope with last-minute changes?
Reliable	Are you good at coming up with imaginative solutions?

SPEAKING 4. In pairs ask and answer the questions in Exercise 3. Discuss your individual strengths and weaknesses, giving specific evidence.

5.Now give some more information about your strengths and weaknesses. Try to use the following phrases.

strengths	weaknesses	positive characteristics	negative characteristics
I’m excellent at	I’m not very good at…	I am…	I can sometimes be…
I’m able to…	I could be better at…	I try to…	Occasionally I am…
I’m interested in…	I’m reasonably good at…		I can be a little bit…
I recently managed to..	I would like to be able to…

VOCABULARY 6.Job advertisements tend to use a lot of jargon, like proactive team player .Look at the extract from a job advertisement. Discuss what the terms in bold actually mean in practical terms. Why are they important skills in the workplace?