# Unique Personal Qualities: 8 Examples and How to Find Yours Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/unique-personal-qualities/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/unique-personal-qualities.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Unique personal qualities with examples, from curiosity and perseverance to initiative, plus how to find yours and describe them credibly in an interview. ## Key facts - Title: Unique Personal Qualities: 8 Examples and How to Find Yours - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Building Confidence, Influence - Primary keyword: unique personal qualities - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/unique-personal-qualities/ ## What this page covers - Unique personal qualities with examples, from curiosity and perseverance to initiative, plus how to find yours and describe them credibly in an interview. - Practical guidance for unique personal qualities - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Unique personal qualities are the traits that shape how you in particular go about things: curiosity, perseverance, honesty, kindness, humor, reliability, initiative. The trait on its own is rarely what makes it unique. What does is how it combines with your own experiences, and whether you can show where it made a difference. If someone has asked you what makes you unique and your mind went blank, that is normal. What comes naturally to you feels ordinary from the inside, so it is the hardest thing to see. The answer is usually already there. It just has to be found first, and then backed up. ## What makes a personal quality unique The VIA Institute on Character describes 24 character strengths, among them curiosity, perseverance, honesty, kindness, social intelligence, humor and zest. Its free survey ranks all 24 for each person, and the top five count as that person's "signature strengths." The point of ranking them is that everyone has all 24 to some degree. What sets you apart is the order and the combination, not owning some rare trait nobody else has. VIA also separates character strengths from your other personal strengths: your skills, talents, interests and resources. A skill is something you can do, and it can be taught in a course. A character strength describes how you go about things, so it shows up across very different situations. When an interviewer or an application form asks about your unique personal qualities, the question is "how do you work?", not "what can you do?" Answering with a list of skills misses the question. That leads to the most useful reframe of all: distinctiveness comes from combination, not rarity. Patience is common. Patience plus three years of tutoring younger students is a profile few other candidates share. Curiosity is common too. Curiosity plus a second language, or an unusual part-time job, starts to be yours alone. You do not need an exotic trait to have a unique profile. ## 8 unique personal qualities, and how they show Each entry below is a quality that can set you apart, with what it looks like in practice and what it takes to make it believable. ### 1. Curiosity Curiosity shows in the questions you ask and in what you choose to learn when nobody requires it: the course you took for fun, the topic you went down a rabbit hole on, the colleague you asked to explain how their part of the work fits in. On its own it can sound like a cliché. It becomes distinctive when you tie it to something specific, such as a language you taught yourself or a side job that took you somewhere unexpected. ### 2. Perseverance Perseverance is finishing what you start when it gets dull or difficult. It is one of the easiest qualities to claim and one of the hardest to fake, which is why it needs a concrete story with an outcome: the thesis you finished during a hard semester, the part-time job you kept through exam season. Expect an interviewer to ask for a second example, so have two. ### 3. Honesty Honesty is telling the truth and owning your mistakes, especially when it would be easier not to. It is a clear case of a character strength rather than a skill. It describes how you go about things, not what you can do. In practice it shows in moments like flagging an error in your own work before anyone else spotted it, or saying early that a deadline is at risk. ### 4. Kindness and social intelligence Kindness is noticing what other people need. Social intelligence is reading people and situations well: sensing when a teammate is overwhelmed, or when a meeting needs someone to summarize and move on. These are often the qualities other people name in you before you see them yourself, because to you they simply feel like paying attention. ### 5. Humor and zest Humor brings lightness to a group, and zest brings energy and enthusiasm to the work itself. Both only help in an application when you can connect them to how you work, such as the energy you brought to a project that had stalled, or the humor that kept a stressed team together. Enthusiasm in particular can carry real weight when experience is thin: > The only reason I was hired — and my boss told me this too — was that I was passionate about it. I came in with so much energy and such a strong will to get out there and do something great. You can learn a lot of things, but you can't really learn to be motivated. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, describing the reason his manager gave him. It was one manager's reasoning, not a general rule about hiring, but it shows that a quality can open a door that a thin resume could not. ### 6. A strong work ethic and reliability According to NACE's 2026 survey of employers, a strong work ethic is among the [attributes employers most want](/knowledge/personal-qualities/personal-attributes-examples/) to see on college graduates' resumes, and more than half of the employers surveyed named ten or more attributes they look for. The catch is that almost every candidate claims a strong work ethic, so the claim alone sets nobody apart. Reliability, meaning doing what you said you would, when you said you would, is how that work ethic becomes visible. It differentiates you only with a specific example attached. ### 7. Initiative Initiative is doing what needs doing [without being asked](/knowledge/influence/show-initiative-at-work/). In a first job it becomes visible within weeks: the process you documented because nobody had, the follow-up you sent before anyone reminded you. Unlike qualities claimed on a resume, initiative is judged by behavior over time. That makes it one of the few ways a newcomer without much experience can stand out early. ### 8. A combination only you have The last entry is not a single trait but the pairing of a familiar quality with your particular experiences, whether part-time jobs, volunteering, club roles, caring responsibilities or tutoring. NACE reports that internship experience is the attribute employers rate as most influential when choosing between otherwise equal candidates, and that general work experience, leadership positions and extracurricular involvement also weigh in. The reason is simple: experience is where a quality has been demonstrated rather than claimed. Even [jobs that seem unrelated](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/transferable-skills-for-jobs/) to the role you want are raw material. A waiter who handled a fully booked Saturday has a story about staying calm under pressure. ## How to find the unique qualities that are actually yours Because your own qualities feel ordinary to you, the fastest route to a credible answer is outside observation. [Ask three or four people](/knowledge/self-awareness/questions-to-ask-for-feedback/) who have seen you study or work, such as a former manager, a teammate or a teacher, to describe a time they saw you at your best. Then look for the quality that recurs across their answers. A trait that two or three people name independently is almost certainly one of yours. A ranked strengths survey such as VIA's can add a second angle, as long as you treat it as a prompt for reflection rather than a verdict. Compare its top five with what people told you. Where the two overlap, you have your strongest candidates. It is also worth noticing which activities give you energy rather than draining it. Research reported by NPR in October 2026 links applying your strengths in daily life to higher wellbeing and lower stress. So identifying your qualities is not only interview preparation. It also tells you which tasks and roles are likely to suit you. And if the picture still feels blurry, a structured self-check can give you [an outside view of your work habits](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) to set beside what other people told you. Whatever it shows, those habits can be built. ## How to describe your unique personal qualities in an interview When an interviewer asks "What makes you unique?", a strong answer has four parts. Name one quality. Describe a concrete situation. Explain what you did. End with the outcome. Then connect the quality to what the role needs, so the interviewer does not have to make the link for you. Choose one or two qualities you can back with evidence rather than five adjectives you cannot. Interviewers typically follow up by asking for another example, and a claimed quality with no second story behind it tends to collapse at that point. Because the most commonly wanted attributes are the ones nearly everyone claims, the story is what does the differentiating, not the label. Your stories can come from anywhere you have actually shown the quality: a part-time job, a group project, a volunteer role, a responsibility you carried at home. Hobbies and quirky facts earn a place only when you can show how they connect to the way you work. ## What turns a quality into something people notice Look across the eight qualities, the advice on finding yours and the four-part answer, and a pattern emerges. A quality counts once you know it is genuinely yours, can claim it without flinching, and have let other people see it in what you do. **Building Self-Awareness** is the starting point, because your problem is rarely a lack of qualities. It is not knowing which ones are yours. Recognizing your natural strengths means looking at what you are genuinely good at, how doing it feels, and the results it produces. Asking for specific feedback then fills in the blind spots. A strengths survey can support that reflection, but it cannot replace it. **Building Confidence**. Many people can name a quality privately but freeze when asked to say it out loud, because it feels like bragging or the evidence seems too small. Confidence here is not positive thinking. It is built by collecting real moments where the quality made a difference, and by practicing your answer in low-stakes settings before the interview that counts. **Influence** is what makes a quality visible at work. A well-earned reputation comes from delivering consistently and being known for something specific. Taking the initiative, by volunteering to prepare, organize or write the first draft, gives other people a chance to see your qualities instead of hearing you describe them. The **free Job Skills Test** measures all three, alongside the nine other work skills it covers, so you can [find out which skills already support your qualities](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and which are worth building next. None of them is fixed, and each can be learned. You may recognize one of these qualities in a habit you have never thought to mention. If you are the friend people call when a plan needs a backup, or you kept a part-time job going through exam season, you already have reliability or perseverance with a story attached. Any qualities you want to show more of are built through behavior you can practice, and you stay yourself while you do it. You choose which of them to develop first. You will be asked what you bring again and again: in applications, in interviews, in your first performance review. Each time it gets easier if you have already done the groundwork of knowing your qualities and the skills that make them visible. That groundwork is something you can start on now. ## See what stands behind your unique qualities All that remains is to see where you stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills. It takes about 7 minutes and shows how you score across all twelve, and which ones would do the most to make your qualities visible to an interviewer or a new team. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Unique personal qualities with examples, from curiosity and perseverance to initiative, plus how to find yours and describe them credibly in an interview. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Building Confidence, Influence. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/unique-personal-qualities/ Preferred summary: "Unique personal qualities with examples, from curiosity and perseverance to initiative, plus how to find yours and describe them credibly in an interview." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.