You Are Not Special, But You Are Unique. Positioning Through Stories.

Before an interview, most people spend time preparing answers for likely interview questions. This is useful preparation for the interview essentials. The trouble many first-time job-seekers get themselves into is that the interviewer is not looking for answers already on your resumé. Interviewers want to hear something that adds to it. You need to realize that a successful interview isn’t an interrogation it’s a conversation. If you want to break out of the question/answer, fire/response interview, aim to intersperse in some interesting information about yourself in the form of stories that demonstrate your uniqueness.

Why Stories Matter in Interviews

Stories serve three critical purposes in your job search. First, stories are engaging, entertaining, and help position you, not as a job applicant, but as a person who would be great to work with. Stories allow you to show some personality.

Second, in today's job market, you will likely face a competency-based or what is commonly called a behavioral interview. In a traditional interview, the interviewer will ask you questions focused on whether you have the skills and knowledge needed to do the job. A behavioral interview goes further by asking you additional questions about your character and personal attributes that can better determine whether you fit their corporate culture. In behavioral interviews, you will need to back up your words with examples that speak to your knowledge, skills, and abilities. The interviewer asks probing questions to learn not that you can do something, but that you have done it.

When you talk about yourself in a behavioral interview, you want to talk about your accomplishments as technical skills—that show you can do the work and interpersonal skills—your behavior/qualities that show you fit. Let’s say you have leadership ability, but saying, “I am a great leader” is not very credible. By telling a story in which it is clear through the narrative that you demonstrated qualities of a leader, creates a credible example of your leadership ability. Moreover, because it emerges from the story, you never have to make the claim that you’re a leader.

Third, telling stories keeps your answers concise and focused. Inexperienced candidates tend to give long-winded answers believing they need to tell the interviewer everything. When you ramble, you lose your audience.

Crafting Stories

Behavioral interviews can be challenging the first time you experience that style of interviewing. Behavioral interviewing is a skill you can learn and master.
Behavioral interview questions often begin with "Tell me...", "Describe...", "When...". Example: Describe a time you worked on a team project and one of the team members did not pull his/her weight. What did you do? This question doesn’t ask you what you would do but what you actually did.

Constructing your answers to behavioral questions is based P.A.R. method –what problem was I asked to solve, what action did I take, what was the result or on S.T.A.R.—situation, task, action, result. When deliberately and compellingly put together these create a personal story.

A story needs to have a clear beginning, middle and end—the result. You don’t want your anecdotes to be too long, aim to be able to deliver the story within 60 seconds. There is no need to put more details in there, if it’s an interesting story you can be sure the interviewer will ask you about it and there is your chance to elaborate.
In order to tell a memorable story, it’s important that it be original and true to you. People want to hear about your out-of-the-box way of doing things, your imaginative and clever methods to reach goals.

The construct looks like this.
 

How it works

Interviewer: Tell me about a time when you taught yourself something new at work.

Interview wants to learn about your ability to work without a lot of direction, are you self-motivated, will you initiate projects.

You: As an intern at XYZ Company, I was given one of those intern assignments, which by its very nature comes with very little strategic direction. I approached the assignment as I do most things— logically and objectively creating a plan that looked at ways the department could improve how it collected and tracked information. To test and prove the model, I selected one country to review every data set, map, and catalog. Once I knew the model worked, I was able to expand the model to other countries. The model I created is in use today by the department.
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Interviewer: Tell me about your experience setting up your classroom for the first day of school.
 
Interviewer wants to learn about your ability to create a nurturing and inviting classroom, your organizational skills, and how well you will manage your classroom.

You: Because I graduated in January, I had the opportunity to start my full time student teaching at the beginning of the school year and work alongside my mentor teacher in setting up our kindergarten classroom. Our focus was to ensure students had their own places to work and that we established an effective routine starting day one. From their first day of school, every student had a basket to place their folders in and another for their lunch boxes, hooks for their backpacks and jackets, and an assigned seat all with name tags. All of these housekeeping tasks really helped us to establish routines in the classroom within the first week of school.
___________________________
Interviewer: Describe a time you had to make a difficult decision.

Interviewer wants to learn can you put the interests of the team or the company ahead of your own.

You: I was the captain of the high school swim team and in my senior year I had to make a very tough call. In swimming, the team races for points. It was an important meet and the coach left it to me to make the decision to either put in a senior, who was a very good friend or put in the faster swimmer. Ordinarily you give seniors as much racing time as possible but in this instance doing that would have jeopardized the team’s standing. I chose the faster swimmer and had to talk with my friend to help him see that it was the right decision for the team. His initial response was to not show up at the meet but that was not a good decision for him or the team. Instead, I found a different event at the meet for him to compete in and a different way for him to contribute to the team that day.

 

Final thoughts

Always think of interviews as a conversation between two equals. When you accomplish this, you come away a step closer to your goal of landing the job you really want.
To have a real conversation, prepare your stories beforehand, practice them so that they flow and listen to the question to know which of your stories to use.