Own Your Interview - Part 1

"Very impressed with you resume”, I said “tell me something about yourself”. 

“I was born and brought up in…..”, And I started fiddling with my pen, patiently waiting for her to complete so that I can get on with my pre-planned questions.

I am sure you have been there!!

What are the issues with this start of the interview?

It is cookie cutter. It lacks structure and cohesiveness. It is usually filled with things that are not interesting or irrelevant for the interviewer. It has too many details or too few.

Result:The interviewer quickly boxes you in one of pre-conceived categories and your uniqueness is lost right then!

You don’t want it. 

Instead plan to lead the interview from the word GO and make the interviewer want to give the control to you. 

Breaking your interview’s script and pre-planned questions must be your goal with that first response because - “most interview results are decided within first 5-15 min”.

How do you do that?

Split your response in 3 parts (only part 1 is covered here since this is where rubber meets the road) 

Part 1 – Career stages– How your career has moved through different stages - Formative, Progressive and Leading and maybe Fulfilling years.

This part establishes your relevance to the job and creates lot of leading questions.

Part 2 – Family– What support you have – establishes how it actually helps you do your work. 

Part 3 – You– your values, your strengths, your growth needs – this establishes your uniqueness and your authenticity.

Rest of the article deals with Part 1 only as this is where you can start leading the interview:

Each one of us go through different career stages

1- Formative years 

In my first year at the job, I have had the privilege to be a Technical Assistant to the president of a large public company. I had a massive learning about dealing with executives, understand their pressures etc.

Carefully consider initial 25% -30% of your career – A lot of what you do today, was influenced by what you learnt there.  

This experience created a base for you to build on, gave you massive insight on dealing with people etc.

What were your top 3 learnings? What were your 1-2 key accomplishments that you are proud of till date.

Since this was years back, there shouldn’t be a lot of stuff here.

Don’t give details as the interviewer WILL ask leading questions later.

2- Progressive years

Next 25-40% were years, when you performed amazingly well, got rewarded, promoted, changed jobs, got more money etc etc.  

The key here is you progressed to a highly responsible position.

Write down what were your key learning – top 4. 

What were your most significant accomplishment during that period – your top 3. 

Even when these may not directly relate to your current job interview, the interviewer will see a pattern of excellence.

Your “top of the game” scenarios will result in a lot of leading questions later – allowing you to control the flow of the interview.

3- Leading years

These are the recent times when you brought a lot of Influence in your environment. The response here has to be tailored to bring out elements related to this current job interview. 

Your top 3-4 key accomplishments - relevant to this job you are applying for. 

Ensure quantitive information - and things that made an impact on your stakeholders - where you went over and beyond. 

Your key learnings that would be relevant to the job you applying for and your accomplishments.

4- Fulfilment years

Chances are, this wouldn’t applicable to most people. It needs people to challenge themselves and transform their lives through external coaching to break out of their shells. 

Fulfilment years are not a time when you are old and dusted! – this stage is something that resets your career and gives a different perspective of living your potential. This is what fewer people go through - and it opens up a whole room of massive growth opportunities both financially and personally! 

This isn’t even a viable question for most people as it takes investment of time, money and energy. This is a stage that is enabled by others, such as a coach - and most people are so “I-Know-It-All” driven that this wouldn’t be for everyone.

I will leave you with the following thought.

Your authenticity is your biggest competitive advantage– so don’t try to fit into a role or make drastic changes. 

Most roles have lot of flexibility and if you have 50% alignment, you could make it work. Every interviewer knows that. 

Now go and crack it!

Watch out for Part 2.

About me: I am a mindset transformation coach and I work with people to make conscious choices about their lives and career to become unstoppable.