Over the past few years, I’ve had the good fortune of interviewing some outstanding candidates. Whether I’m interviewing for junior or senior roles, the consistent success factors remain the same. Here are five ways to take your interview performance to the next level.
Make connections
In many, if not most, job interviews, candidates are given an opportunity to tell the interviewers a little about themselves. This is your chance to set the stage and articulate how each stop on your career journey has prepared you for this particular role. Building out your career story around selected mini-stories that illustrate an aptitude or experience directly connected to the job you are applying for (and making that connection explicit) is a sure fire way of framing yourself in a great light. Even early roles in retail or the food services industry can highlight an aptitude around customer service, negotiation or people skills – any of which might be important for the future role you are applying for. Later career experience that highlights your project management, people leadership or communications skills further builds out a deep and diverse candidate perspective.
Make eye contact
One of the most important things you can do in an interview situation is connect with the panel that’s interviewing you. It’s a hard thing to do, because at the same time, you’re likely nervous while trying to field different questions, which you may have a varying level of comfort answering. Eye contact and confident, poised body language are important tools in your arsenal when trying to build a relationship with the panel. Don’t forget to consciously project the image you want the hiring panel to see.
Principle, approach, results…repeat.
Some of the best interviews I’ve experienced featured candidates who were able to relate their ability via an overarching principle for each answer, before they dived into how they would make the principle a reality in the day-to-day operations of their job. Then with the coup-de-grace, they’d round it out by using an example drawn from previous experience, which ends with a summary of the results. An example of this from my own field might be connected to team management.
If asked about my approach, I’d start at a high level with the principles that inform my management style: “I approach team leadership is a combination of pace-setter and charismatic leadership coupled with plenty of positive feedback and encouragement.”
Then I’d take it to the next level describing the operations of this principle: “This means that I like to conduct 1 on 1 sessions and group meetings where we build on our collaboration by sharing successes and lessons with the group. At the same time, I like to integrate in accountability, so we do a lot of check-ins on existing projects to ensure progress is being made.”
Finally, I’d break it all down into an example to hammer home the point. “Here’s how this looked in action. When I first started at my job, I noticed there were too many meetings leading to a breakdown in understanding among team members around shared goals. Things weren’t getting done efficiently and there was a lot of redundancy. To remedy this I implemented a new meeting system that was rigidly chaired, focused on shared accountability but also incorporating plenty affirmation and support for the team. The result was a significant increase of 25% in team effectiveness as measured by a new reporting metric that I developed.”
Be specific
There can be a real inclination in interviews to utilize what I call “generalities” to shield the fact you don’t really know what you are talking about. Generalities often appear to use buzz words or broad over-used clichés (such as: “I’d approach the problem strategically.” How do you mean? “Well, I’d really give a lot of thought to a strategy and then implement that strategy.” Great – but the real question is what does that actually look like?) Answering a question with a “generality” is a sure fire way to demonstrate you don’t know what you are talking about – even if you do! Make sure to keep your answers specific and experience based. You don’t always need to get into the weeds – but you do need to be specific and clear and ideally use personal and work examples to hammer home your point. Avoid speaking to broadly and focus on metrics – if you have them – that can demonstrate the clear success of your approach.
Know your vision
For higher level roles, it’s important to have considered your vision for the role. What are you going to do that will help move the organization or businesses forward towards its business objectives? Are you a transformational leader or a maintainer? There can be needs for both types of leadership but be clear in your own mind what sort leadership style and vision you are bringing to the table. Giving a great deal of thought on your vision for your unit, your division or your organization is a pretty important thing to do before walking into any job interview.