Have you ever been in an interview, and your mind goes completely blank when you’re asked a question? This is terrifying for anyone, but it’s even harder to recover if English isn’t your first language.
When you’re looking for a new job, you hear lots of advice about how to update your resume, beautify your LinkedIn profile, and prepare for interviews. Standard interview advice tells you to: practice commonly asked questions, make eye contact, dress professionally, and have a firm handshake.
While this is all fine, what does it really mean to prepare and practice for an interview? It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the thought of working your way through a list of 10 or 20 questions, especially if you’re interviewing in a language that’s not your mother tongue.
I advise a different approach. Instead of starting with a list of questions, start with YOU! I’d like to show you how you can bring together your skills, goals, strengths and things you’re working on to show off the superpowers you already have in order to get the job you want!
Find your target
I’m a visual learner, so I created the image above to show how the different elements in an interview connect.
On the outside ring is your goal: getting the JOB you want. Everything is connected to this goal.
In the very center are the SKILLS you have or need in order to get the job and ultimately to do that job well.
The horizontal line is the time axis, which draws from your past EXPERIENCE and points forward to your future GOALS. Your skills are, of course, built from your experience, and they’re also what will take you into the future.
Within your skillset, you also have STRENGTHS as well as things that you’re WORKING ON. (Instead of preparing for the question: “What’s your WEAKNESS?” you should think about the areas you’re working to improve. We’re all trying to get better at something, and this is a much better way to answer that dreaded question.)
Using this graphic as a guide, you can begin to brainstorm the work experience stories that you want to share in order to show off your superpowers during your interview.
Be a hero
Instead of just reacting to the questions the interviewers throw at you, you should come prepared with a narrative or portfolio of stories that not only show the interviewers who you are, but prove it with clear, concise examples from your work and volunteer experience.
Don’t start with the questions; begin with YOU! After all, you should be the hero in your own work experience stories. The interview is simply where you get to describe your superpowers.
Most interviews begin with some version of “Tell me about yourself….” This is where you introduce the character who will be the hero of each work experience story. Choose 2-3 strong characteristics that will be the theme around which you build your examples.
You should be the hero in your own work experience stories.
I suggest thinking about how your best friend, your mom, or your most trusted colleague would describe you. Obviously, not all of the adjectives your mom uses would be appropriate in an interview, but sometimes it’s easier to imagine nice things that someone else says about you than trying to brainstorm your own best qualities.
Each story you tell while answering the interviewers’ questions should relate back to your key qualities—your superpowers.
Write your stories
As I said at the beginning, I don’t recommend that my clients practice from a list of interview questions. It’s a lot of extra work when you never really know for sure what you’ll be asked.
Instead, I suggest preparing a portfolio of stories—stories that reinforce your superpowers, that show your skills by connecting back to your experience, and that prove your strengths by connecting them to your skills.
Your skills are built from your past experience, and they’re what will take you into the future.
When I work with clients, I help them choose 4-6 strong, memorable work experience stories that connect to the superpowers they identified in their “Tell me about yourself” answer.
What’s great about having a portfolio of stories is that you are not waiting to see what question lands in your lap. You already know the stories you’re going to tell. What’s even better is that you’ve had time to practice until you know you can answer clearly and comfortably. All you need to do is choose the best story and change the ending.
Let’s see how it’s done…
S.T.A.R. + S
You’re probably already familiar with the STAR method to organize your work experience stories. STAR stands for SITUATION, TASK, ACTION, RESULT.
Prepare your stories by succinctly answering the following questions:
- Situation: What was the situation or challenge? What background info is necessary to understand this situation?
- Task/Target: What did you need to do to meet the challenge or deal with the situation? OR What was your target or objective? What were you trying to achieve?
- Action: What did you do? Why did you do it? Were there any alternatives? Why didn’t you choose them?
- Results: What was the outcome of your actions? What did you achieve or learn from this experience?
- Summary (or So what?): Why does it matter? How does it show your abilities or character?
You’ll notice that I add an extra “S” to the list because this is key to adapting or pivoting your story to answer a variety of questions.
For instance, if you’ve prepared a story that shows off your leadership abilities, you can very easily tell the same story to answer a question about your communication skills. The situation, task, action, and result parts will likely remain the same. However, it only takes a few keywords in the summary to change the focus of the story from leadership to how well you communicate with those you lead.
When I work with clients to prepare their portfolio of stories, we finish by brainstorming and writing a list of keywords in the summary so that they’ve already thought about which types of questions each narrative might answer.
They know they can take the story they prepared about an impressive group project they worked on and use it to answer a question about: working on a team OR meeting deadlines OR prioritizing and time management OR compromising with colleagues, etc.
Yes, it’s a lot of work to prepare this portfolio of stories. However, the good news is that you only need to prepare one time. Once you practice your stories and understand how to pivot the ending, then you’re ready for almost any interview!