Interview Stories

Key to a successful interview are good stories. Learn how to create good stories here.

Write your stories down

Why are interview stories important?

Imagine you’ve just sat down in an interview and face two or three people in front of you. You need to learn their names, take in a new environment, read all the body language, interpret the meaning of the questions they’re asking, and adjust your style as you learn more. The last thing you want to do is think of good stories to illustrate your points. That’s too much cognitive load for anyone.

Enter Interview Stories. These are a stock of at least five or six stories of major accomplishments (and failures) in your recent career, which you have picked apart and know inside out. These will showcase what you’ve done in the past and, chosen well, provide evidence of what you can offer your future employer.

When I interviewed for my current role, I spent most of my preparation time on these and learning more about the company and its culture. This combination prepared me well for success.

Now, as a manager of hiring managers, I teach my managers what I learned:

1. Asking questions in an interview about prior achievements helps to understand whether the person has the required experience; asking prospective questions (what would you do if…) doesn’t.

2. By deep-diving into the answer, you’ll quickly discover if the experience is made up — this tests the person’s integrity. I had a recent example where the interviewee eventually admitted that “their” experience was actually what they observed their manager doing. When we asked about the rationale of why a particular path was chosen, they couldn’t.

3. Focusing on stories allows the interviewee’s storytelling skills to be tested and their passion to show.

So, what are Interview Stories, and how do you create and use them?

Your Interview Stories

Your stories flow from your CV.

For each achievement or accomplishment you have written in your CV, consider how you will explain that accomplishment to others. For example, if you reduced the cost to serve a customer by 30%, have at least a couple of ways to illustrate how you did it. Your interviewer is likely to want to know:

1. Your role in the achievement. Was it your achievement, or were you part of a team that achieved it?

2. How you approached the problem

3. What challenges you faced, and how you overcame them

4. What the impact was at the end

The STAR format helps you here -

Situation: What was the original problem that needed to be solved? Try to be specific and give some background to why that problem, why then, and why your employer asked you to solve it.

Task: What were you asked to do specifically? Were you given detailed instructions, or did you work it out yourself?

Activity: What were the steps you took? What succeeded and what didn’t? How did you overcome those challenges? Who did you have to involve? How did you persuade them to help? What tradeoffs did you make?

Result: What happened in the end? Why did it succeed, and how was it received? How did you tell others and get them to use your solution to the problem?

These stories are the foundation of most modern Competence Based Interviews. They have evolved because prospective employers want to know what you did in a real situation, not what you might do in a hypothetical one. It’s more important for an interviewer to illustrate you know something through a story rather than say you can do something.

Why does this format work? It’s difficult to keep up a lie as the interview progressively uncovers more and more details. You can only be convincing if you did the accomplishment.

Whatever stories you come up with, the interviewer is trying to find out:

• Can you do this job?

• What risks does your style bring?

• Can you explain things simply without getting tied up in unnecessary detail?

• Are you honest?

• Is your style one that I can live and work with?

• Do I like you?

Summary

When you next get asked to describe a time that you did X:

• Make it a recent example relevant to the role;

• Be sure to use the language they’ve used in your response. For example, if they call something a procedure, you call it a procedure and not a process;

• Be clear about the role you played;

• Be clear about the outcome;

• If you don’t have the specific experience they’re asking about, say so, but if you can, use a similar example and

• Keep it short. If you feel yourself not getting to the point, get to it.

Trained interviewers can tell when you’re talking in theoretical terms rather than from experience, so please ensure you spend time rehearsing a wide range of stories.

If you have any other tips, please let me know.