3 Interview Habits for Success

Have you noticed that interviews are moving away from the traditional scripted style type of interviews?

Less        “tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership”

More     “tell me about yourself”

Interviews are increasingly becoming free flowing conversations. However, many people fall in the trap of having a "nice conversation". The number one thing you must understand from the hiring manager:

What problem does the interviewer really want me to solve in this role?  

 1.      ASK INTENTIONAL QUESTIONS

Interviewees are not spending enough time preparing and crafting good interview questions to understand the key problem the hiring manager is trying to solve. Below are a few of my favourite questions that you can ask in your next interview.

• What are you responsible for delivering in the next 12 months and 3 years?  
• Follow up Question. What is missing in your team to deliver on those objectives now? 
• What is your team doing well at? What could they be doing better?
• If your team had more time or resources, what would you focus on?
• What do you think is the biggest challenge for someone like me in this role?

2.      ESTABLISH YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION

By asking questions that help you understand what the interviewer really wants. You understand the stories you need to share to influence the Hiring Manager that you are the best person to solve their problems.

3.      STORYTELLING = INFLUENCING

Imagine the Hiring Manager (Naomi) shares this key problem with you "My team is using excel to prepare weekly charts to Senior Executives which are often late with data that is over 4 weeks old."  

Capture her attention, you lean forward slightly and say, "Naomi can I share with you a similar story about how my company had the same problem and how we solved it?" 

You share this story with the hiring manager

"Let me take you back to 2018, at ABC bank we were facing the same problem. We had a team of 12 people who were often working weekends to create these weekly charts. You can imagine how high the turnover rate was in my team because of the weekend work. So, what did we do? We decided to move all our excel processes to the business intelligence solution Tableau.

I was the lead Business Analyst documenting stakeholder requirements and building proof of concepts. It took us 10 months to completely switch over to the new tableau solution. As a result, all the weekly charts are automatically generated saving 200 hours per week, and no one works weekends anymore. Do you know what the hardest part of the project was? It was the time spent standardizing the data across different systems" 

 This example story achieves three things

• Created a strong mental image of the story you are telling by using words such as “You can imagine”.
• Established yourself as the person that can help solve the Hiring Managers problem.
• Created a platform for further dialogue on a topic that is important to the Hiring Manager.  

Summary

I love the new way of using the power of storytelling during interviewing. Opening an interesting conversation and a lasting impression on the Hiring Manager.

1. Ask intentional questions: prepare and ask questions to understand what problem the interviewer is trying to solve by hiring me.
2. Establish your Value Proposition: Know the value you bring to solve the Hiring Managers problems.
3. Storytelling = Influencing: Choose the best story that is consistent to your value proposition.

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Check out my previous article on 3 tips guranteed to get you an interview

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