What recruiters love to hear, or "The college student and the hardware store"

Over the years, Colleen McCreary Wheeler figures she has conducted about 8,000 one-on-one job interviews with college students. Each conversation takes its own turn, but she keeps coming back to a favorite touch point: "How could you add the most value to my company?"

Getting hired in a competitive situation isn't just about establishing competence, McCreary Wheeler explains. Winning candidates stand out because they bring extra spark to the conversation. During interviews, she senses something about their background and drive that makes them stand out.

Fortunately, those "wow!" moments can emerge almost anywhere. McCreary Wheeler has been a top talent-spotter for the likes of Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Zynga, before landing her current job as chief people officer at Vevo, a premium entertainment platform. She notices far more than grades and famous-name internships. Even a knack for puzzle-solving can vault a non-traditional software engineering candidate to the front of the pack.

A few weeks ago, McCreary Wheeler served as one of three volunteer judges for #AceThatInterview. In that initiative, college students from across the United States posted short videos on their LinkedIn profiles, answering the classic job-interview prompt: Tell me about a time you showed initiative.

McCreary Wheeler's favorite video in the mix came from Kevin Catete De La Rosa, a finance major at the University of Central Florida who made the most of a summer job at a hardware store. His answer (see above) centers on the way he cross-trained himself in different specialties such as lawn care or power tools. That made him a more valuable employee, able to answer customers' detailed questions in many areas, even if the regular specialists weren't available.

"There's an opportunity in any job to exceed expectations," McCreary Wheeler points out. "He did that." What's more, she says, De La Rosa projects a confident tone in his response, with a sense that he sought out extra training because he "liked gaining new skills and being able to share more information." That can-do ethos is a blessing in any customer-facing job, she says.

To find out more about #AceThat Interview, see this October article introducing the program, and this November article with further details. To see other student videos that stood out from the pack (there are six in total), take a look at feedback from two other seasoned recruiters who served as volunteer judges. Former Google recruiter Michael Junge shares his feedback here, and A.J. Walker, a human relations manager at Indiana's First Merchants Corp., offers his perspective here.