#InterviewTip: Selecting “Stand-out” Projects to Discuss
An important component of running #Recruiters or #HiringManagers through your background experience and accomplishments is highlighting stand-out projects you’ve worked on. By stand-out, I mean your “wow” accomplishments – those things which allow you to make others hear about it and say “wow!”. It is especially important for you to take note of and practice diving deeper into a couple of stand-out accomplishments/projects especially if you’re at a senior level and cannot realistically go through each and every project you’ve completed over your career. In any case, the end-goal is to capture the attention of the other party and show examples of how you’ve personally delivered amazing results to previous organizations and really sell them on the impact those particular projects had (and possibly continue to have) - and which you can potentially achieve in a similar fashion, at the organization you're meeting about.
In selecting which stand-out projects or accomplishments to discuss prior to your #interview, consider the following:
- As much as possible, select those which would be most relevant to the position you’re interviewing for and which are ideally a similar situation
- Do not “wing it” at the #Interview. Practice how you’re going to pitch each stand-out item, practice it again, and practice it again. It should sound natural and fluid with minimal difficulty in remembering or having to recall most important details.
- Cater your explanation to the person you’re relaying it to. If you’re speaking to a non-technical person, you might want to explain things in simpler terms. Also keep in mind, a non-technical person may not understand the significance of a particular achievement if not explained in understandable terms.
- Don’t just explain what you did – also explain how you did it, the challenges/obstacles, how you overcame the challenges, the results you achieved, and the kind of impact those results had (and possibly continue to have) on the organization
Whatever you do – don’t downplay your accomplishments! A mistake I observe a few candidates make whom I get into contact with is they don’t really sell me on their accomplishments. Its only after some probing and digging in from my end I usually come to the conclusion that the project they were speaking of had a major impact on the organization and its customers. Not everyone is going to dig in and come to that conclusion folks – quit downplaying your achievements!
Wishing you the best in your #JobSearch!
Dean Kulaweera - #TechRecruiter
You can also follow me on:
Instagram (@dktechrecruiter), Twitter (@dktechrecruiter), “Like” my Facebook Page (Dean Kulaweera - Tech Recruiter) and Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for #JobSearch Videos!
Collaborator | Facilitator | Empathetic Leader | Change Agent
5 年Thank you for sharing this quite insightful perspective Dean and this should really be followed to highlight achievements effectively. However what I have experienced so far in calls with #Recruiters is that most of the times when they call up #JobSeekers for a position we don't have details as per which we may pitch our achievements so we end up giving an overview of the entire experience and when the #Recruiters starts drilling down to the granular level we gain better understanding of what could have been highlighted. One way to sort this may be could be that the recruiter shares the jd prior to a call or may be over call as well the conversation is structured in a fashion that the standout accomplishments can be brought to the fore. But yes your thoughts do help us to be prepared with all such information prior to a call with a new recruiter as well for sure!!