What are your core competencies?
Your core competencies are skills, abilities, or traits that you are most experienced in and which can provide a benefit to the company or the customer. They should be things that everyone might not excel in and that you do almost as a second nature.
Examples might be good communication skills, great sense of organization, employee management, mathematical proficiency, or near-perfect data entry.
Maybe you have exceptional customer service skills... it can be many different things.
Most importantly you should be sure to list things that will help you in the specific job you are applying for. There is no need to tell how fast you can type if you are applying for a job driving cars.
what are your strengths?
A really great way of telling someone about a flaw is to always add a suggestion of improving that flaw. For example you could say, " I'm always told that I am a bit too slow... but that's only because I want to do the best job I can. I guess you could say I'm a bit anal when it comes to perfection." An employer can only look at that as being a great characteristic, and in no way a negative quality to possess.
Talking about your strengths is a tricky one; you do not want to come across as egotistical. From my interviewee, an excellent answer I like to get is this: " I am very headstrong. I really like to be challenged in my job, and I just want to learn as much as I can in my position. At the end of the day I need to be able to look back on my day and feel good about the job that I've done. I guess you could call it sense of self worth. That's why I always put my all into everything I do."
why should we hire you?
Your key strategy is to first uncover your interviewer's greatest wants and needs before you answer questions. You might say: "I have a number of accomplishments I'd like to tell you about, but I want to make the best use of our time together and talk directly to your needs. To help me do, that, could you tell me more about the most important priorities of this position? All I know is what I (heard from the recruiter, read in the classified ad, etc.)"
Then, ALWAYS follow-up with a second and possibly, third question, to draw out his needs even more. Surprisingly, it's usually this second or third question that unearths what the interviewer is most looking for.
You might ask simply, "And in addition to that?..." or, "Is there anything else you see as essential to success in this position?
Prior to any interview, you should have a list mentally prepared of your greatest strengths. You should also have, a specific example or two, which illustrates each strength, an example chosen from your most recent and most impressive achievements. You should have this list of your greatest strengths and corresponding examples from your achievements very well committed to memory.
Then, once you uncover your interviewer's greatest wants and needs, you can choose those achievements from your list that best match up. As a general guideline, the 10 most desirable traits that all employers love to see in their employees are: