6. Recall past experiences for use in interview questions. – As many of you know the most popular interview type these days is behavioral based interviews, where the interviewer asks you to describe past actions. The reason this is so popular is that research as shown in and outside of the workplace that past behaviors are the best predictors of future behavior (good to remember for your personal life J). Below are some common behavioral questions:
· “Describe a time when you had lead a group.”
· “Please share with me a time you had an ethical dilemma at work and tell me how you handled it.”
· “Tell me about a time you had multiple priorities to juggle and how you handled it.”
I’ll venture to guess that if you’ve gotten stuck in an interview before it’s been on a behavioral based question. If you are anything like me when asked a question like this without preparation your mind goes blank and you can’t remember what you had for dinner the night before let alone an ethical dilemma you faced possibly years ago. Before an interview make a list of at least 10 work situations that could fit the most common behavioral type questions. Below are some of the requirements to round out your list:
· Make sure your situation is complex since you should be prepared to answer the follow-up questions that most likely will come. You do not want to get into a situation where you have relayed every detail you can remember and then have 3 follow-up questions requiring more detail/analysis. Also the more multi-faceted the situation is the more likely you will be to be able to use it for various questions.
· It is always easiest to remember more recent events that have come up in your current or most recent job, but in the interview you do want the interviewer to see the full picture of you and what you are capable of achieving. Make sure you identify examples in all relevant positions you’ve held.
· To clarify from the prior point, as best as you can make sure the examples are professional. Depending on where you are in your career this could mean different things. If you are still in college or have little professional work experience your situations can span school projects, extracurricular activities, non-professional jobs, and internships. Once you have several years under your belt in the professional world you should avoid examples from college unless they are the perfect fit and unique to you. Before the following story please note I am married to a past Eagle Scout and have great respect for the Boy Scouts in general. I interviewed a man several years ago who used an example from Boy Scouts for almost every question, until I prompted him to specifically give me work examples, where he seemed to freeze. He had been out of college for at least 10 years and worked in a very similar job to the one I had open.
· Think of examples that are fairly unique to you. In college you were assigned a group project where one person didn’t pull their weight? OMG you poor thing, I thought that never happened, please tell me more! I guarantee this is not the reaction your interviewer is going to have.
Having trouble putting together this list? Here are some steps to jogging your memory of your prior struggles and achievements.
· Review your past and present job descriptions. If you don’t have your job description (which is a great thing to print and keep with your records), just think through your major tasks and responsibilities in that job. Think about the times when it was most difficult to complete these responsibilities and what the obstacles were.
· Review old performance reviews (again a great thing to keep). Many of us are raised to be humble, so it can be hard to toot your own horn, so look at these to recall what your manager said about you.
· Think about the time you liked a prior or current job the most. For me that was usually when I had met a challenge and felt proud of myself or a situation came up that I felt I had the perfect amount of training and expertise to handle.
· Think of your most satisfied clients. When I’ve gotten notes or emails from satisfied clients I’ve held on to them (mostly just for motivation when the going gets tough), but they are very useful in this exercise. Don’t have clients you say? Doubtful since most of us provide a service to someone. For example my clients as a recruiter were the managers for which I was hiring and secondarily the applicants.
· Think about your failures. I bet most of you won’t have any problem thinking of these because they have probably been played over and over in your head. What you learned and how you came back from them are what will be most helpful.
· Consider your strengths and weaknesses and the examples of demonstrating both.
· Read sample interview questions, there are thousands of books, articles, blogs, etc. with just these.
Got your list? Now study, study, study! Notice I didn’t say memorize because if you do your interview could come off too canned and rehearsed. However remember enough about each to be able to recall and tailor your answer to the question you actually receive. Also do not have the list out in your interview, if you do you run the risk of referring to it during the interview and that is a definite DON’T.
Tips 1-6 of 10 have all been about preparation! That should tell you that preparation is over half the battle of an interview. Look for the next 4 tips coming up soon that focus on the actual interview itself!
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