Interviewing is one time in our lives that we become actors performing on stage. This can build anxiety levels in the majority of us, as we have not written or practiced our scripts prior to the interview. Plus, we are not accustomed to being in the spotlight. One of the motto’s of actors is “Think before you act, so that you can act before you think.” We have read thousands of articles that provide us guidance on how to prepare for the interview, how to answer questions during the interview, and how to listen and speak during the interview. What about the scripts of our lives? The ones that make up who we are today, what brought us to the table to position ourselves as one of the candidates of choice. How to think before we act, so that we can act before we think?
Interviewing techniques tip 1: Balance passion and skill.
It's easy to end up in a career that reflects what we do best rather than what we love to do. The best is often to find a mix of both at the beginning, and then work to transition over time into doing solely what we love most. If you start with passion and skill, it won't be long before you succeed. When starting a business, you sometimes need to use your skill to fund your passion projects.
Tip 2: Develop a compelling story
We tend to conclude that our lives are pretty much the same as other people's, that they’re average and boring. As a result, many people don’t tell their own story well. But your story is so much better than you think. The way your life has evolved; the things you’ve learned; your achievements, failings, and dreams—these things are unique to you and much more interesting than you realize. Sharing your well thought-out story is a powerful interviewing technique.
Your story is what helps people understand who you are and where you are going. So learn to tell your story and tell it well, especially for interviewing and networking purposes. Putting together your story takes a lot of work and practice. However, the benefits to you and to your career are enormous. Your stories:
- Give you confidence
- Increase your self-awareness
- Bring humanity to your resume
- Make you memorable and set you apart
Developing your story for job interviews
Take a comprehensive inventory of the chapters of your life. Think about major events, memories, and turning points that shaped who you are. Make notes about your feelings, expectations, and frustrations, or what you learned, accomplished, and experienced. Organize your chapters by time periods or jobs.
Focus on memorable “aha” moments. These stories need to have vivid dimensions so people will experience that moment with you. It may have been a moment with your mom on the porch, or a trip you took to a faraway place, or what a boss or mentor told you. The stories don’t have to be dramatic, just meaningful to you.
Uncover the themes in your story. What emerges as your passion? Mentoring others, doing research, helping a specific type of client, advancing knowledge in your field? What gives you joy? Are you a teacher, a leader, an entrepreneur, a risk taker?
Reflect on your career path. How have you arrived where you are today? Why did you make certain choices? Who helped you along the way? What motivated you then and now? Have your career goals remained the same or have they changed? Are you someone who likes new projects? Or executes the details of someone else's vision?
Practice makes perfect
Once you’ve developed your story, the next step is to practice telling it—saying it out loud, ideally to others. Don’t wait until the interview to tell it for the first time. Try reciting it into a tape recorder or sharing it with a confidante for feedback. Get over your feelings of story inadequacy or thinking that a job well done speaks for itself.
As you become more comfortable in how to tell your story, you will see that your life has not just been a string of random events. Your story has a past and it has a future and the road ahead becomes clearer when you understand where you have been. The ultimate test will be the next time someone says, "Tell me about yourself."
Tip 3: Tailor your story to the job
Applying your story to a specific employer or job is the next step. Lining up the stories that apply to the opportunity at hand is critical. Put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes and pose the questions you would ask. Which stories are relevant to this job interview? Think about personal stories that show how you handled change, made choices under pressure, or learned lessons from mistakes and failures. You should also think about stories you can tell in the interview that reveal your skill set.
Learning and appreciating your story is a prerequisite to any interview process. Don’t rely on your ability to think on your feet. Anticipate the questions and have answers at the ready. In the end, this is about making a great and memorable impression that demonstrates competency and ability.
If you’re having trouble developing a good interviewing story, ask your friends or family members for their own success stories. Notice the elements that make them work, such as specific details and a smooth flow. Notice elements that don’t work, such as vagueness or rambling. Then think about your own experience and try to uncover the moments when you really excelled or when you rose to meet a challenge. After you identify several, practice them until they flow easy and work on adapting them to different types of questions.
Tip 4: Manage stress
Interviewing for a job can make anyone stressed. In small doses, that stress can actually be beneficial, helping you perform under pressure. However, if stress becomes constant and overwhelming, it can impair the way you communicate during an interview by disrupting your capacity to think clearly and creatively. When you’re stressed, you’re more likely to misread an interviewer or send confusing or off-putting nonverbal signals.
If you can’t quickly relieve stress in the moment and return to a calm state, you’ll almost certainly be unable to take advantage of the other interviewing techniques and tips. All our best intentions go out of the window when we’re overwhelmed by stress. It’s only when you’re in a calm, relaxed state that you can think on your feet, recall the stories you’ve practiced, and provide clear answers to an interviewer’s questions. Therefore, it’s vital that you learn quick stress relief techniques ahead of time.
Quick stress relief in an interview
When stress strikes before or during an interview, you obviously can't diffuse it by taking time out to meditate or go for a run. By learning to quickly reduce stress in the moment, though, you can maintain a relaxed, energized state of awareness—even when faced with challenging questions—and remain focused and engaged.
Tip 5: Be prepared
Interviews range from conversations lasting a few minutes to several formal meetings, sometimes with more than one interviewer. Interviews allow you to demonstrate that you are the right candidate for the job, but you are not alone if interviews make you nervous. The better prepared you are, the more relaxed and comfortable you will be when the questions start coming your way.
Job interview preparation tips:
Do your research. Gather information about the company and the position available. Try to specifically relate your experience to the duties the job opportunity entails.
Practice interviewing. Enlist a friend (better yet, a group of friends and colleagues) to ask you sample questions. Practice making eye contact.
Record your practice sessions. Pay attention to body language and verbal presentation. Eliminate verbal fillers, like “uh,” and “um.” Practice using positive body language to signal confidence, even when you’re not feeling it. Instead of tentatively entering an interview with your head down and eyes averted, for example, try standing tall with your shoulders back, smiling and maintaining eye contact, and delivering a firm handshake. It will make you feel more self-confident and help to put the other person at ease.
Handle logistics early. Have your clothes, resume, and directions to the interview site ready ahead of time, to avoid any extra stress.
Don’t forget about your references
Don’t let your references be the last to know about your job search, or even worse, get an unexpected call from a potential employer. Many offers are withdrawn over bad references. Why take that chance? Get in touch with your references right away to seek help and to avoid surprises on either side.
- Are your references relevant to your current job search? Who should you add or subtract?
- Are there any reference gaps? Gaps that an employer will question? What is your story about those gaps?
- Can a colleague, vendor, customer, or board member be added to replace or enhance the list?
- What is the current status of your relationship with your references?
Tip 6: Anticipate likely questions
To get to the motivations and working style of a potential employee, employers often turn to behavioral interviewing, an interviewing style which consists of a series of probing, incisive questions.
Sample behavioral interview questions include:
- Describe a situation in which you didn’t meet your stated goal, how did you handle it?
- Tell us about a situation in which you encountered resistance from key people, how did you convince the person or people to do what you wanted?
- Describe a situation in which you took the initiative to change a process or system and make it better, how did you identify the problem? How did you go about instituting change?
Preparing good interview answers
Interviewers will follow up your preliminary answers with further questions about your actions. To prepare for these types of interview questions, the following tips might help:
Review your research about the company and the position.
Make a list of key attributes for your desired job.
Write sample interview questions that are likely to uncover the attributes you identified as important.
Create answers to the sample interview questions based on a template such as “Situation – Action – Result” with specific details from your work experience.
Practice answering the interview questions and follow-up questions so that you are very familiar with several detailed examples/stories. Rehearse key points.
Tip 7: Ask questions during the interview
Being prepared and asking great questions about the position and the employer shows your interest during the interview. You can't just be an effective responder. You need to assert yourself, too. By the time you reach the interviewing stage, you should be clear about what you want and what you offer to the company.
Try to be thoughtful and self-reflective in both your interview questions and your answers. Show the interviewee you know yourself—your strengths and your weaknesses. Be prepared to talk about which areas would present challenges and how you would address them. Admitting true areas of weakness is much more convincing than claiming: "I have what you need and I can do anything I put my mind to."
Tip 8: Boost your EQ
As we know, it’s not always the smartest person or the one with the most relevant skills that gets the job. Rather, the successful candidate is often the one who has the best “people skills”, who can relate easily to others. In other words, it’s the person with a high emotional intelligence (EQ). Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to communicate effectively and empathize with others. If you have a high emotional intelligence you are able to:
- Recognize your own emotional state and the emotional states of others.
- Engage with people in a way that draws them to you.
- Pick up on emotional cues, communicate effectively, and develop strong relationships.
Along with the ability to quickly manage stress, emotional awareness is a primary skill of emotional intelligence that can be learned. Being able to connect to your emotions—having a moment-to-moment awareness of your emotions and how they influence your thoughts and actions—is the key to understanding yourself and others.
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