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Use storytelling to make your mark during job interviews
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Use storytelling to make your mark at your next job interview.
The current job market is tough. A fact not lost on job hunters. With competition for available positions at an all time high, many job hunters are willing to do just about anything to get noticed.
Job hunters have tried everything from billboards and skywriting to showing up at an employer's office with a fresh baked cherry pie or following recruiters back to their hotel after a job fair.
The desperation job hunters are feeling at this stage is understandable. The stalker vibe such tactics give hiring managers is quite understandable, too.
So what can you do to get noticed in a highly-competitive job market? Incorporate the art of storytelling in your job search. In past articles we've discussed how to incorporate storytelling in networking and your resume. This article will discuss one of the most popular uses of storytelling in a job search - during the interview.
Formula for Storytelling Success
In recent years behavioral interviewing has become most employers' interviewing technique of choice. Behavioral interviewing is based on the premise that your past actions are a clear indication of your future actions. Interviewers ask job candidates a series of situation-based questions in relation to past work experiences. Here are a few examples:
- Tell me about a situation in which you had to adjust to changes over which you had no control.
- Describe a time when you made a suggestion to improve the work in your organization.
- Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty to satisfy a customer.
- Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment to solve a problem.
- Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer.
How should you approach a behavioral interview question? Author, educator, and associate editor of Quintessential Careers, Katharine Hansen, Ph.D, recommends developing an arsenal of 5 - 20 career stories that can be used in interviews and other career situations. These stories should follow the situation-action-results formula.
"Basically the stories should be success stories. But some of the stories should be stories that started out as failures or problems and show you overcame something or learned something," Hansen says. "You'll be asked behavioral questions in both positive and negative ways. That's the reason you need to have some negative stories as well as positive stories."
As a hiring decision-maker I frequently used negative behavioral interview questions. Job candidates often find these questions tricky. Sometimes it is because we don't go into an interview thinking about our past mistakes, but rather about how we excel. Questions about past mistakes can easily create a roadblock for candidates. I could understand if a job hunter wanted to think about the question and come back to it. However, if the candidate quickly responds "I don't make mistakes" - without even thinking - it brings the person's truthfulness and/or self-awareness into question.
Preparation is a critical part of the interview process. Yet behavioral interviewing can make preparation more challenging.
"The reason behavioral interviews are so difficult to prepare for is you could be asked a vast variety of questions. It's really hard to predict what you are going to be asked," Hansen says. "I have found that if you have this arsenal of 5 - 20 stories ready you can pretty much adapt them to any behavioral question that you're asked."
For more info: Listen to the entire podcast, Get Hired by Mastering the Fine Art of Storytelling, with guest expert, Katherine Hansen, Ph.D. Download your copy of the Savvy Jobseeker's Guide & Workbook to learn how to develop your career success stories and incorporate them in your job search.
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