Whether you are applying for your first summer internship or are well into your career, job interviews are hard.
To prepare, jobseekers will often research the most common interview questions, and script out a perfect response. That’s a smart move, but there’s a trick to writing that response that most people forget. In this post, I’ll reveal the two tweaks to make to your interview responses that can help become more memorable and more desirable.
The Most Common Interview
Most interviewers rely on the same lazy formula for interviewing candidates: They’ll usually start with a softball question like, “tell me about yourself” which gives you (the interviewee) an opportunity to pitch yourself for the job. (Note: you should absolutely not give a play-by-play of your entire resume when asked this question, but we’ll get to that in a later post.)
Next, they’ll typically ask you questions about your experience based on what’s in your resume. This is often the bulk of the interview.
Finally, they’ll get to what are technically referred to as behavioral interview questions. These questions include such classics as: “tell me about a time you overcame adversity,” “tell me about a time you were asked to do something you had never done before,” or even “tell me about a time you failed at something.” They are designed to assess soft skills such as adaptability, collaboration, fit, growth potential and more, and they are really important.
Most advice on answering these questions have you following the STAR framework:
Describe the situation
Explain what your task was
Explain what actions you took
Explain the result.
That formula is not strong enough to land you a job.
The STAR framework is missing two key elements: Stakes & Growth.
Including these two elements in your response will make all the difference. Here’s how:
Explain why it mattered.
Stakes – When setting up the situation, don’t just explain what it was, explain why it mattered. For example: “This live event was make-or-break for the company and had to be absolutely perfect.” Or “Market research was our company’s signature service offering, and this was our most important client.” By establishing the stakes, you not only show that you were working on something meaningful, but you also create storytelling tension that draws the listener in.
Don't make them guess!
Growth – The last part of the STAR framework is Results. However, stating the results of the project is not enough. In fact, the interviewer only asked that question to try to understand what skills and qualities you possess. Therefore, don’t make them guess. Tell them! Always try to end a response to one of these behavioral questions with how the experience helped you grow.
In an interview, there’s a big difference between ending a story with “We were able to grow revenue by 50%”, and “We were able to grow revenue by 50%, but more importantly, going through that experience taught me how to manage a complex project with tight deadlines.”
In the second version, you plant back in the interviewer’s mind a skill or quality that you have. Many people know to do that if they are talking about a failure. But it is equally important to do this when talking about a success. The quality you tell them you developed is what they are actually looking for. It’s what they’ll remember about you long after they’ve forgotten the details of your story.
Interviews are intense, but they don’t have to be scary. Knowing these simple tricks can make you a more memorable and more desirable candidate.
Commenti