melissaserrano16-blog

[melissaserrano16-blog]

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[melissaserrano16-blog]

Strengths & Weaknesses

When asked “what are your strengths and weaknesses” I feel like my answer to this has typically been very strategic. I am usually asked this when in a job interview, in which i am usually trying to make myself appealing to the employer. The other instance in which I am tasked to create a response to this is when pitching a new client, in which I am trying to make my services a necessity to them. Quite honestly until this course I have never really thought of this. As per this particular assignment and at the risk of sounding cheesy below are my most honest to date strengths and weaknesses. 

For reference, I will begin this analysis with a bit of background on myself. I am a 24 year old digital strategist working in advertising in Toronto. This current role, which I am so utterly passionate about, is very far off from where I thought i would be at the tender age of 17/18 (when I applied to college). Initially, I thought I wanted to be working in the hospitality industry as an event planner. I always enjoyed the busyness, creativity and people skills the job required. 

As I worked my way through school, and a few internships later I found this was not the career for me. It ticked the boxes of busyness and “people skills”, but it defiantly lacked strategy, continuous challenge and the creativity that i hungered for. I first realized this through my first 2 internships working for a boutique event agency and a luxury hotel. I began to discover my true calling at my last internship as an events and marketing intern for a private members club. Working on the marketing side really awakened my passion for marketing, as cliche as that sounds. 

Through this final internship I discovered my love for public relations and event management, but only as it pertained to PR strategy. After this “life changing”, and I mean that literally, internship I went on to work as PR and Marketing coordinator for an array of clients and agencies. It was at one of my first agency jobs, in which social media management was first “dumped” on me, that the beginning of my whole love affair with digital strategy and was discovered. 

Since then I went back to school and studied Strategic Public Relations and Digital Strategy further. I would say that, although I do not work in PR anymore and solely focus on digital strategy, this assisted in myself discovery of my strengths, weaknesses and my professional passion. 

I believe that what makes me great at my job, and what keeps me interested is the following skills i get to use on a daily basis: Research, Strategic Planning, Creative Direction, Client Facing/ People Management, Public Speaking, Creative Writing, Stress Management, Analytical and Critical Thinking. 

Research, creative direction, creative writing and strategic planning really go hand in hand for me. When I’m working on an account or pitching a new program to a client these skills are often times used simultaneously. I am usually researching trends in order to provide creative direction so that I can strategically plan and later creatively write. 

Client facing, people management, public speaking and stress management are my real bread and butter. These are one of my favourite aspects of my job. I am someone who thrives on human interaction, and client facing and public speaking truly gives me life. This is because it allows me the opportunity to present my work and converse with people about my work, which I am deeply interested in. 

People management, is also a large chunk of my work, and I love it. I am the type of person who can arrive at a party alone and leaves with a minimum of 5 new friends. This strength makes me great at my job because a large portion of it is digital influencer relations. Not only do I have a large roaster of people I have an existing relationship with, but I have no issues developing new relationships. Lastly I would say that strength management, as it pertains to mostly this aspect of my job is a skill because not only do I thrive under pressure, but a lot of the time the pressure is coming from the client side and I am able to put them at ease. 

Analytical and critical thinking when involved in digital strategy is a great strength of mine. I believe that I have an excellent understanding of the concepts of digital strategy, data I am reading and reporting on, and this strength has defiantly helped my career trajectory. This strength I think is a great way to transition into my dreaded weaknesses. Analytical and critical thinking, as a more broad term, I would say is not a great strength of mine. I often times try and make myself feel better by saying as a self diagnosed creative thinker, this is not meant to be a strength of mine, but hey i’m no professional. 

To continue on this sullen topic, the following are Melissa Serrano’s greatest weaknesses: Time Management, Conflict Management, Grammar, Anger Management, Focus and Maths. I believe that although all these are considered to be important strengths people should posses, for the most part they have not hindered my growth and I continuously strive to improve upon them. 

Time management has always been a struggle for me. I often have difficulty prioritizing things and also constantly begin multiple tasks at once and sometimes fail to complete some of them. I am not an un-organized person, I have learned to be the type of person who keeps lists and makes calendar appointments while on the road to self improvement. But like everyone, I am only human and when I steer away from the path of organization, time management becomes a huge challenge for me and my greatest weakness.  I will say that because I am such a perfectionist at work, this often time causes the time management to be an issue because I must be happy with my final product in order to submit to client.  

Conflict management and anger management kind of go together. These are two of my greatest weaknesses because I am often avoiding conflict, this then drives me to be angry to the point where I struggle with anger management. Mostly due to the fact that I have already let myself become some annoyed to the point where I can no longer hold back my anger. I continuously try to work on this by trying to speak my mind more when faced with conflict, rather then letting the anger simmer in a low heat until I am at a boiling point. 

Focus is a weakness of mine, but not really a problem for me anymore. I have been diagnosed with ADHD so that will always be a weakness of mine. At the moment I manage my focus with a combination of therapy and medication so in terms of personal development it has really been put on the back burner for now. 

Last but no least, grammar and maths are my final weaknesses I wish to discuss in this post. I would say the reason I struggle with grammar and maths is my lack of attention to detail to subjects I do not enjoy. Grammar, also is often times over looked for me because I am eager to get an idea or thought out. I have learnt to be much more aware of grammar and have learned it can anger a client very quickly when it comes to community management and social posting. As I am someone who strives for excellence and I try and improve my grammar skills on a daily basis by reading more often and triple checking my work prior to it going out to client or the world wide web. 

Maths is something I have for the most part given up hope in. I am so deeply uninterested and bad at it, unless it is simple or as it pertains to forecasting on a subject I actually like (digital). Maths is not something I think I necessarily need to improve on for my job, and when I do use it as it pertains to my job I am not bad at it because I understand the concepts so well. So I will conclude my post by saying my final weakness of mathematics may just be a misunderstood and underused secret strength of mine, but the chances of that are highly unlikely (TBD).