The Secret Sauce for Acing that Job Interview

Periodically Gen-Yers and -Xers corner me for job interviewing
suggestions. By the time they get around to talking, they’ve sent off
their resume and are being invited to interview. So naturally, they’re a
bit tense. Knowing that a great deal of my consulting business is about
interviewing for gigs and selling my services, they want to know
whether these skills transfer to job interviewing. The answer to that
question is a big YES.

Sure, I comment, you want to have a lot of knowledge about the
company and the job for which you’re interviewing. You want to have some
smart questions to ask, questions that show you’ve done your homework
on the job–and the organization. You also want to be able to talk about
your strengths and vulnerabilities in very constructive ways. Most of
all you want to create an identity in the recruiting manager’s mind that
you’re the best person to resolve his or her needs.

So, they ask, what’s the best way, the best format for creating that
identity, for explaining and selling yourself? The answer is easy. Be
able to tell some fascinating, intriguing tales about yourself and your
value.

Quite a few years ago I was interviewing for a consulting gig with
the Executive Vice-President of Marketing at Ralston Purina. After about
twenty minutes, filled with getting-to-know-you small talk, he put the
issue on the table. “Tell me some stories about your consulting
experiences,” he said. I was surprised and amused that a sophisticated
power player would put his request in plain language. I got the job–a
gig that lasted more than six years, working with vice-presidents and
directors at the firm.

Like most business people, Stephen Denning, a former exec at the
World Bank, scoffed at such touch-feely stuff as stories, believing that
analytical was good, and anecdotal was bad. Failing in his use of
power-point and analysis to gain the support for his efforts, he created
a number of tales to envision the future of the organization. It
worked, and he reports on it in an HBR article on the power of Telling Tales.

Stories are the most primitive and consistently the most highly
successful means for communicating. Analysis and statistics drive
business thinking. They cut through myth, gossip and speculation and
excite the mind. Their strength is their objectivity. But that’s also
their weakness. They never offer a path to the heart. And that’s where
you need to go to motivate a recruiter or a manager to hire you. Stories
are the most attention-grabbing and best-remembered communication tool.
They are the secret sauce of communicating and the one and only most
powerful tool for job interviewing.

A few years ago one of my daughters got a superb management job at a
hot, new pharmaceutical firm in Massachusetts. After being hired, she
made the rounds of the firm’s eight interviewers, mostly Harvard and MIT
scientists, to check in and find out why she got the position. The
responses were unanimous: she had a “superb education, unusual depth of
experience,” and “great stories.” That’s a not-too-shabby recommendation for the persuasive power of telling tales.

What to remember

Make sure your story matches the situation. When you’re interviewing
for a job, the stories should help the recruiter to understand who you
are, what you’ve done and what you bring to the job. Ideally, he’ll not
only end up liking you, but respecting and needing you. Stories for this
purpose are usually based on personal work events that show what you
did and what you took from those experiences. You also ought to have one
or two stories in your toolkit that highlight some vulnerability and
details how you corrected it.

For an interview, you should be able to encapsulate a story in six to
eight sentences. It should describe one or two of your important
characteristics, explain the context, detail the action including the
problem and its resolution. If you can depict the problem as a
conflicted process or relationship, all the better. A few colorful,
descriptive words go a long way with recruiters. Pay close attention to
the recipient as you talk and emphasize the important words or idea.

Although the story form that I’ve identified is just a start, I hope
it’ll inspire you to add stories to your interviewing toolkit. The
ability to tell the right story for your interview is the secret sauce
of successful interviewing.

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