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Describe Yourself In An Interview: IELTS Speaking Cue Card

You should say

  • What are your key personality traits?
  • How did you developed it?
  • How it has helped you in career?
  • Have you faced personality testing challenges?
Show all 51 answers

Cue 1:What are your key personality traits?

  • Identify two or three key traits that define you, such as being hardworking, adaptable, or a good communicator.
  • Provide specific examples or situations that demonstrate these traits in action.

Example

I would describe myself as a hardworking and adaptable person. For instance, during my last job, I often took on extra responsibilities to ensure our projects were completed on time. This not only helped my team succeed but also allowed me to learn new skills.

Cue 2:How did you develop it?

  • Discuss experiences or influences that shaped your personality traits, such as education, family, or work experiences.
  • Mention any specific challenges you faced and how you overcame them to develop these traits.

Example

I developed my adaptability through various experiences in college. I was part of a student organization where we often faced unexpected challenges, like last-minute changes in event planning. Learning to think on my feet in those situations helped me become more flexible and resourceful.

Cue 3:How has it helped you in your career?

  • Explain how your personality traits have positively impacted your professional life.
  • Provide examples of situations where these traits led to success or recognition at work.

Example

My hardworking nature has helped me achieve several promotions in my career. For example, when I worked on a critical project, my dedication and attention to detail were recognized by my manager, which led to me being entrusted with more significant responsibilities.

Cue 4:Have you faced personality testing challenges?

  • Share any experiences with personality tests during interviews and how you felt about them.
  • Discuss how you approached these tests and what you learned from them.

Example

Yes, I have faced personality testing challenges during interviews. Initially, I found them quite daunting, but I learned to view them as an opportunity to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. For instance, one test highlighted my tendency to be overly critical of myself, which I have since worked on to maintain a more balanced perspective.

Conclusion

    Example

    In conclusion, my key personality traits of hard work and adaptability have been instrumental in shaping my career. They have not only helped me overcome challenges but also allowed me to grow and succeed in my professional journey.

    Following this structure will ensure you cover all the essential points while providing a clear and engaging response to the cue card topic.

    Tips to answer this Cue Card

    1: Being Vague About Traits

    Candidates often give vague answers without specific examples. This makes it hard for the examiner to understand your personality.

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    Tip

    Provide clear examples of your traits, such as being 'organized' and explain how this trait manifests in your daily work.

    2: Neglecting Personal Development

    Some candidates fail to explain how they developed their traits, which can make their answers seem superficial.

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    Tip

    Discuss specific experiences or challenges that helped shape your personality traits, such as teamwork or leadership roles.

    Ignoring Career Impact

    Candidates often overlook how their personality traits have positively influenced their careers, missing a key aspect of the question.

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    Tip

    Link your traits to specific career achievements or situations where they helped you succeed, demonstrating their relevance.

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    IELTS Cue Cards asked last week

    Reported by Leap students who gave IELTS

    Describe your favourite food at a traditional festival or a special event in your country
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    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7.5

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    Pitampura Test Centre, New Delhi

    Answer

    I like to taste different types of cuisine. Here I would like to talk about my favorite dish at my traditional festival of Onam which is Sadya. Sadya is popular in my city. We are experimenting these cuisines on Onam festival day. Onam is a famous festival in my city. All family members get together in my home and we make a delicious Sadya. There are many ingredients includes that Sadya. Moreover, we make a big feast that day as well as we create a lot of memories together and we wear that day the traditional dress called Sari and men wear the Dhotis. That festival is really important to us because the whole day we are conducting different kinds of games at our homes and all the family members came together. It's a memorable day in my life. This is the festival. We are making the Sambar and Aviyal. These all the kinds of foods are making with the vegetables.
    Talk about a toy you liked in your childhood
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 8

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    Sector 34 Test Centre, Chandigarh

    Answer

    The toy which I liked in my childhood was a panda doll, which makes me pleasant and makes me more blush. The pandas are the most beautiful creatures of the world, which looks gigantic and has pooshy cheeks and they are like stars in the clouds and they dream in me. Furthermore, these have been given by my father. My father is a very very beautiful artistic person, who makes me think of that. Every day you will face every difficulties and make you suffer and move forward. Pandas are always seen in Japanese countries. It is my lifelong dream to visit a Japanese country and click a photo with the original pandas, which makes sounds better.
    Describe a time you were in a place where you didn't know the local language
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 6.5

    location icon

    Whitefield Test Center, Bengaluru

    Answer

    As India is a very large country full of diversity, so there are many places which have their own language and speak their native language. The place which I visited and I didn't know about their language was Leladakh, which is about 300 km away from my hometown and it is a very good place as it consists of different kind of trees, animals and have many scenic views and I visited over there last year in summers as it was the best time to visit because it has many, it was cold over there and we had summers in our area so it was the best time to visit over there and I went over there with my whole family.
    Describe a time when your friend damaged something you owned
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7

    location icon

    Begumpet Test Centre, Hyderabad

    Answer

    When I was a kid, I had a little pencil box which had these four buttons which gave the pencil box an operative use. When you press the button, the box would open up. When you press the second button, a little part of it would slide out. Basically it was just a little electronical and a fun thing to have and I owned it when I was in 6th. One day after break, I was standing and talking there with one of my friends and another friend of mine was running through the hallway and accidentally she pushed my shoulder and my pencil box hit the ground and it broke into multiple pieces to the point that it was not functional anymore.
    Describe a book you recently read
    anonymous person icon

    Reported by

    Anonymous student Band 7.5

    location icon

    CBD Belapur Test Centre, Navi Mumbai

    Answer

    It Ends With Us is a book I read recently. It's by the author Colleen Hoare. It's mainly a story about two teenagers, Atlas and Lily, and how they just handle their life going through high school, adolescence, and just domestic violence at home. Both of them come from very, very different families. However, they have one common determining factor between them, which is domestic violence. The abuse that they've seen their moms go through is just insane, and they connect through that on a different level. They're actually in the same high school, but they never speak to each other until Atlas actually crashes into an empty house next to Lily's villa. When Atlas is homeless and he doesn't have anywhere to go, he just comes and breaks into the house next to Lily's, and Lily helps him with all the daily necessities like clothes and food, medicines and stuff. Furthermore, their friendship blossoms into love, but it doesn't really fructify as Atlas has to leave. This book really gave me a lot of knowledge about domestic abuse and how to deal with it.

    All Answers

    Here are all the answers by real-users practicing speaking for IELTS Cue Cards on our IELTS Prep App.

    Band 7

    My name is Kushala and I'm currently pursuing my final year engineering degree in SJB, IT Bangalore and I'm currently studying electronics and communication engineering. The reason why I chose this is because of my interest in the internet of things and networking fields which inspires me to solve any kind of problem that arises in my life. And I'm a simple yet extraordinary person who has a lot of dreams and goals in mind to achieve in life. The reason why I consider myself extraordinary is because of my beautiful parents who supports me in everything. Now I'm going to take an extraordinary step that is the higher education and I'm going to go abroad and study masters in Germany.

    Band 7

    Good morning, my name is Sandili Jain and I am currently pursuing my PGDM with a major in finance and minor in analytics. I have always been passionate about numbers and problem solving which led me to explore opportunities across financial analysis, equity research and consulting. During my summer internship at Gale India Limited, I worked on a project titled Comprehensive Share Evaluation and Strategic Analysis of MGL where I used DCF, DDM and CCA valuation techniques along with ratio analysis to assist the company's financial health and market performance. Beyond academics, I am an executive member of Finitiative where we have curated financial related events and webinars to build engagement and learning among peers. I have also volunteered at an NGO which helped me grow my interpersonal and team collaboration skills. I would describe myself as a proactive and adaptable individual who enjoys taking on challenges. I am now looking forward to roles.

    Band 7

    First of all, I'll start with my name. My name is Ansh Parikh and I've completed my bachelor's from Karnataka University. I've spent my bachelor's year in understanding English literature and psychology. Now, I will speak about my personality aspects. One thing that I would like to describe at first is I am a really good listener. Throughout my lectures, I've experienced this that I was able to take actively part in active listening. Not only active listening has helped me to understand and comprehend the topic, but it has also gave me the ability to explain the learned topic to other people. My second personality trait would be memorizing things. I've realized that I have developed a presence of mind where I am able to recall parts of various subjects and accumulate them and provide a very constructive argument. My third personality aspect would be me making topics easier for the other people. Through this skill, I'm able to present any topic in a format where an average person could understand and learn it very easily. Throughout my psychological journey, I've came across many testing modules where I've constantly took part in tests that has provided me insights about my personality.

    Band 6-7

    I would like to share my experience on one interview. Interview is a very important thing. In interview we can show our potential in a positive manner. The first aspect for the interview, we should present ourselves neat and clean. We should be presentable. When we meet someone, appearance is very important than anything. When someone sees us, they have to get some positive notes from us. Secondly, the way we sit, the way we answer and giving handshake to the other person. These are all more important things. It will give additional points to us. When the interviewer is asking questions, if we don't know the answer, we can answer politely. Whatever we know, we can answer. We should not skip any question. We have to answer boldly. If they are asking, we are not enough, we are not satisfied. We can try to tell them, I will try to satisfy. I will get training in this, I will try to learn this. If I get proper training, I can learn this. Always we try to give some positive notes to them. It will give good confidence about ourselves.

    Band 6-7

    I consider myself as an engineering professional with a mindset of a 9 year experience graduate with just 6 years of professional experience. The major quality that I have is the adaptability, I can adapt to any situation and any work that I am assigned to. As you can see in my resume, I started my career as a project engineer and then I became a project lead, after that I was given a task to do the project production as well. Now I am in the production sector where I look after the business as well as the operation as well. So, in whatever field I was put by my company, I could excel in every areas. The second thing and the foremost thing that supports my adaptability is the perseverance. If I take a job, I just do that in wholeheartedly with that persevering nature, I can complete any task in any time and I do have a great quality of work ownership as well. And through this work ownership, I have built a leadership quality and as you can see I am as of now leading a company with around 70 people and the company is believing in me giving such a great responsibility for just a 6 year experience candidate. If I am in a different company, I would just be in a mid senior level, whereas in my present company I am in the senior most position of a vertical as well. So with that I always think like you know, if you or if your company is exploiting yourself, you should exploit them as well, learning all the things that you need and

    Band 6-7

    Good morning, my name is Anmol and I am quite happy to got a chance to give an interview in front of you. I have dedicatedly worked hard to master the skills in frontend. I have developed my skills in HTML, CSS and Javascript and I am still currently working to enhance more on Angular, Node.js and React. Not just that, all that. I also do an internship with a company named Maxworth for almost three and a half months where I learn various life skills like how to deal with complex situations about the company's culture and many more.

    Band 6-7

    So, I would like to introduce myself, I would say that I am a person who has some characteristics like I am a very confident person, I also believe that I have a helping mindset towards offering support to my colleagues and my friends and also I consider myself as a benevolent person because I have taken part in lot of charity and other non-profit initiatives. Now these skills, I was able to brush up and learn them especially from my family. I would say that my family is more or less a part of a charity organization and we do a lot of charities but other than that I would also say that I was able to acquire this from my school. I remember during my school days we used to conduct a lot of non-profit initiatives, we used to clean the beach and also help other people, you know deliver poor people with the right necessities and food etc. Also I had similar initiatives in my college, so that was how I was able to brush up on my skills and overall all of these skills have helped me to boost my level of success because having more, because like the above skills has contributed significantly to my ability to succeed and also my ability to show empathy which is very good for jobs. Also I was able to make better friends because I was able to find people who have similar interests as mine in this industry and on yes on many occasions I have suffered quite a lot to apply these skills but I also know that I have to do it because you know resilience is very important factor and I believe that resilience is what has helped me to achieve whatever I could in my life.

    Band 6-7

    I am Pavithra Purushotham. I have completed my graduation in the year 2023 with a specialization of data analytics in management stream. And months after my graduation was done, I was looking for job. So I found many jobs and as I was looking for jobs, I applied in many websites like Naukri, LinkedIn and many others. I was not satisfied with the package that they offered me and then finally I landed up getting a job at Vedanthu and I was a personal academic mentor. So my skills were very much improved like the way I communicate with a student, with a manager and also the leadership skills also built because I was managing around 60 to 70 students in a class. As a result, I also, as I have a connection with the student, I learned the quality of empathy where I was helping the students but more with a personal touch. However, it did not last for a very long time because there was an unexpected layoff in our office and I couldn't continue there. I really feel bad about that but then how much ever I work, I was fully satisfied with what I did on everyday basis and I have no regrets joining the company.

    Band 6-7

    Hi, I am Naseemabai Sankhe and I am a final year student studying in Bharatiya Vidyapad School of Physiotherapy, Sangli. I am very passionate about this field, especially in women's health, musculoskeletal and geriatric care. Along with my studies, I am also involved in research of women's health, especially in pelvic floor dysfunction. Talking about me, I am a very extrovert person. I like to make new friends. I like to interact with people, share different ideas. I think give and take of the ideas will definitely help in your career and help you to gain more knowledge, share your knowledge, share ideas. Knowing each other's ideas will definitely help. Then I am also looking forward to do my master's in UK to gain an international exposure, advance my clinical skills and contribute more effectively to the field. I like to make new friends.

    Band 6-7

    So if I talk about my key personality traits, they are being genuine, being honest and being loyal. These are my key personality traits. One more that I prefer a lot about me is to approach depth in any content. So that is my key personality traits and if I talk about how I got these personality traits, I got these traits from my parents because I was born and brought up in Delhi along with my family. I had a joint family. So these are the results of my upbringings that I am today. These are very, very, very helpful in my career because these are the core things that do not let me go away from my base. They always helped me to stand confidently in front of anybody with such traits. I was able to take a head-on collision with anyone in front of me. So that was the key part in my life. And if I talk about personality challenges, I have faced initially when I used to have a stage fear, that time I have done many stage shows, not many, one or two. So that was challenging for me. Thank you very much.
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