Your stories are
important in the context of both creating your resume (The Essay Expert’s specialty!) and preparing for an interview.
Are you the right
fit?
Once you are in front of your prospective employers, your
goal is to communicate that you are the right fit for their organization. The interview is largely about testing
your personality. The interviewers already know that you have the right technical
skills or a demonstrated ability to learn them. What they don’t know is whether or not you will fit in their company culture.
This is where your stories about your employability skills
kick in.
95% of interview questions are behaviorally based. This means that you will be asked questions
that require you to provide an example about how you have demonstrated your employability skills in the past. If
you haven’t prepared your answers, you will likely fumble your way through your
interview.
Tell us about a time…
As an example, imagine being asked, “Please tell us about a time when you had to work with a difficult
person.”
This question is meant to elicit how well you will interact
with your fellow employees. Will you be a good team member to have around the
office?
If you have prepared stories about teamwork, communication,
leadership and problem solving, you will quickly be able to modify one of your
existing stories to provide a succinct and coherent answer to this question.
If you haven’t prepared your stories, your face could turn
white, the blood draining from your brain: “I’m not sure. I can’t think of one
right now. I know that I have worked with difficult people before but I can’t
think of one right now. Sorry.” It is not unusual for these sorts of responses
to be heard in an interview.
How do you think the interviewers will judge your organizational
“fit” with this kind of response?
A structure to rely
on
Now here’s the good news: Interviewers have formulas that
they listen for with regard to how your answers are structured. If you know the
formula, you can prepare so you don’t
get caught off guard.
One common formula is the CAR (Challenge / Action / Result) method.
When answering a question such as the one above about working with a difficult
person, you might choose a CAR story that you had prepared.
Let’s break down the
components of a CAR story so you can create some of your own:
‘C’ is for Challenge or
Circumstance. What situation sets the scene for your story? What was the
context? Who were the players? What goal were you (as a team or individually)
trying to achieve? What roadblocks stood in the way?
Although the first place to look for CAR stories is in your
work experience, some of your best examples might come from family,
recreational, or other extracurricular activities. This is especially true if
you are a new graduate, but might be relevant even if you are a seasoned
professional. If you planned a wedding, for instance, you learned skills that
will apply in any paid position where you might be asked to organize a project
or event. And if you get along well with your family, that’s a great sign that
you will be a great person to have in the workplace!
‘A’ is for Actions.
This is where you differentiate
yourself. What did you do that made a
difference? Be specific and include the most pertinent actions that you
undertook. In the example above, you may have recognized that part of the
reason for the “difficult” person’s behaviour was that you hadn’t been clear in
your communication. So you may have stopped talking and just listened. Perhaps
you discovered that they had misunderstood what you said—enabling you to
communicate your message in a way they could comprehend.
‘R’ is for Results.
This is the “So what?” part of your story. The results you have produced are
some of the most important employability skills you can demonstrate. In the above example, your effective
use of communication through improved listening may have resulted in a clearer
understanding for the entire team of what it was trying to achieve—which in
turn created a high level of focus and ultimately a successful project. You
might even add that a big lesson from this experience was that through
effective communication, you realized that the “difficult” person in question
wasn’t that difficult after all. By sharing your results, you emphasize the
positive impact you can have on an organization.
Reap the benefits of
preparation
Preparing your CAR and employability skills stories,
complete with results and lessons learned, provides you with flexibility when
answering questions. You will be able to simply listen to the question and then
select the most appropriate story to answer it. Your answers will be
well-thought-out and evidence-based, and will make your interviewers engaged
and favourable toward your application.
The power of telling your stories through a structure such
as CAR is that it enables you to shine and reveal your personality, in addition
to demonstrating how well you prepare for important meetings (yes, an interview
is a meeting!). Your interviewers are then in a position to objectively judge
how you would fit in the organization.
If you’d like to learn more about how to prepare yourself to
be a successful interviewer and Young Professional, including another powerful
formula for creating your stories and examples, then access What Really Matters For Young
Professionals!
Gary Ryan is the Founder of Organisations That Matter, author of What Really Matters For Young Professionals! and creator of the Yes For Success online platform for creating and executing a life
of balance and personal success!
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