Be the Candidate They Remember: Prepare, Practice, and Tell Your Story

When venturing into a #jobsearch, it is important that you are able to tell your story in a concise impactful manner. Know where to elaborate and where to truncate. The elevator speech you create must highlight your most valuable strengths for the individual to whom you are speaking. Be nimble and know your audience. Preparation and practice are the best ways to ensure you are ready for these discussions and to ensure that you come across as genuine and natural in your delivery.

Gather your past performance reviews. Look for consistent themes of strengths and weaknesses. What was viewed by your superiors as some of your greatest accomplishments? How did they say you handle conflict or working in a team? Familiarize yourself with how others view you and your work.

Familiarize yourself with the standard behavioral questions. You will often hear people say past performance predicts future performance, which is the basis for asking behavioral interview questions. It’s a way for them to see what you are capable of accomplishing based on what you’ve actually done. They often start with “give me an example of a time when…” There are some general themes to these as well – teamwork, communication, adaptability, time management, motivation. A quick Google search will bring up plenty for you to review, and my colleague, Julie, will be diving into these specifically down the road.

Familiarize yourself with the job description and job requirements. Be sure you know what the company is looking for this position to accomplish and the general job requirements. They will ask questions about these duties, as well as about the qualities they are looking for in an ideal candidate.

Build stories around the behavioral question, general themes and job requirements. The STAR method is widely used to answer behavioral interview questions and ensures that you hit all key points the interviewer is likely looking to know. What does STAR stand for? Situation, Task, Action, Result. 

Situation: Describe in 2-3 sentences the context of the story you are about to tell. 

Task: Describe the task you needed to complete.

Action: Describe the SPECIFIC actions that you took to complete the task.

Result: Be sure to include the impact that your work had on the business. If the outcome was not favorable (i.e. – the interviewer asked you to talk about a time you failed), be sure to include what you learned. 

Use “I”. When building your stories to tell in an interview, you need to focus on what you did, not what the team did. You may need to set the stage when describing the situation as a team effort, but quickly switch to focusing on the tasks for which you were responsible, the actions you took, and be sure to highlight anything that was a direct result of your actions. You are the one vying for this new role – not your team.

Preparation can take some time. Bounce your answers off of a friend or family member who knows you well. They will be the most honest with you and will tell you if you’re likely to hit a home run in the interview or strike out. If you put the work in before you step into the virtual or in-person meeting, you will likely feel less nervous, and be yourself throughout the discussions.