What is your greatest strength? How does it help you as an urban and regional planner?
The answer that you give will help the hiring manager to determine if your greatest asset is something that they could use on their team. They don't expect or want you to list everything you do well, but they do want to hear about the specific attributes or natural talents and skills you'll use to excel in the position.
"My greatest strength is my ability to see the project in a large, full picture, before beginning any solid plans. My ability to view all facets of a plan has been incredibly helpful in my career as it prevents me from making some unnecessary errors and oversights. My current manager has made this comment to me multiple times in my past performance reviews."
It's going to be a lot easier to give a clear, concise interview answer if you just pick one strength. It's best to choose something that will help you succeed in your job. Review the job description and figure out what the job requires or what's most important to the company.
"My greatest strength is attention to detail. I've always been detail-oriented in my work, and it's something I really enjoy and take pride in. I noticed in your job description that this role involves a lot of detail-oriented work, which is one reason I applied. In my last job, I was frequently required to manage 4 to 5 projects at a time and often had over 50 different tasks going on in those different projects. Being detail-oriented allowed me to deliver 100% of my projects on time to our clients. In fact, I finished 45% of my assigned projects ahead of schedule."
Community answers are written by other candidates practicing this set. Reading how others frame the same question is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.
Anonymous Answer
My passion for getting better and taking whichever community I am working for.
Rachelle's Feedback
Your passion for improving and helping others along the way is a high strength! Can you tie in how this helps you succeed in your career? The room for improvement sentence doesn't seem to fit here.
Anonymous Answer
My greatest strengths are researching, writing, and coming up with creative solutions to complex problems. This is perfect because the bulk of a Planner's job is doing all three.
Stephanie's Feedback
You mention important strengths, which correlate well to working as an urban and regional planner. To deepen the impact of your response, I suggest providing a specific example as evidence of a time when you've used research, writing, and coming up with a creative solution to a complex problem. A specific example will go far in strengthening your response.
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