Many years ago when I hated what I was doing for a living I was
encouraged by my career coach to write several short stories about
times and events in my life where I influenced the outcome. I was
stumped at first, but after a few days, I came up with over 15 pages of
stories of times in my life where I influenced the outcome and either
grew myself and/or bettered the existence of either myself or others
around me.
So what does this have to do with a job interview?
If you read other books on job interviews, you'll notice they feed you
a ton of interview questions to learn answers to. An interview is not
an interrogation, however. It's a conversation. To make it that way you
need to come armed. Arm yourself with a multitude of small stories
about both your business life and your personal life.
When you go into an interview, you need to leave the nerves at the
door. The best way to prepare is to be yourself. The best way to be
yourself is to tell your own story(or stories). So have your stories
all in line and ready to go.
This is especially great for the competency-based interview being used
more today. In a traditional interview, the interviewer will ask you
questions focused on whether you have the skills and knowledge needed
to do the job. A competency-based interview goes further by asking you
additional questions about your character, soft skills and personal
attributes that can better determine whether you fit their corporate
culture. These are called "behavioral competencies".
A competency-based interview will spend about half the interview on
your job skills, and about half on your behavioral competencies. The
interviewer will be looking for evidence of how you have acted in real
situations in the past. So having your stories ready to go plays very
well for this type of interview.
A company wants to find out:
1. Are you an asset or liability, ie. Will you either make money or
save money for the company.
2. Are you a team player (will you fit into the corporate hierarchy or
be like sand in the gears) Can you take and give (if appropriate)
orders
3. Will you fit into the company culture (they don't want loners or
prima donnas)
The best way to do that is to take the initiative and have several
personal stories that you can tell, taking maybe a half minute to 90
seconds each.
You may want to start by developing your stories around these areas:
A. Several times where you either made money or saved money for your
current or previous company.
B. Focus on a crisis or two in your life or job and how you responded
or recovered from it.
C. A time where you functioned as a part of a team and what
contribution was.
D. A time in your career or job where you had to deal with stress
E. A time in your job where you provided successful leadership or a
sense of direction
F. What failures in your job did you face and how did you overcome
them.
G. What seminal events happened during your career that caused you to
change direction and how did that work out for you.
I want to emphasize that an interview should not be an interrogation.
It should be a conversation among two equals. When you accomplish this
you come away a step closer to your goal of landing the job you really
want, because…
It's the conversation that wins an interview, and
It's the conversation that wins the job
To have a conversation, have your stories ready.
About The Author:
Joe Turner makes it easy to quickly land that next job. Learn insider job search tips from top recruiters. To claim your free 6-part Recruiter Secrets Minicourse, visit http://www.jobchangesecrets.com/Free_Job_Search_Tips.html
