Job 2: Get Them to See You Working for Them

Okay, you’ve done a great job so far and they like you. Job 1 is done but creating a favorable impression is the foundation. You’ll need to build upon this and get them to see you working for them. There is an old adage that goes, “The best predictor of future behavior is past performance.” This is where your success stories come to play.

In last blog post of December 2009 I first wrote about using success stories (link one) as a means of telling the potential employer about your value. Then in January 2010 (link two) I offered additional insights to building your success stories for an interview. In this posting, I’d like to focus on how to employ your success stories.

Whether you’ve learned from an inside contact what the company really needs or you’ve gleaned it from the interviewer during the early part of the interview, you want to tell your success story in relation to their needs, problems, or opportunities. In other words, what stories best describe you solving their problems? What stories best describe you answering an opportunity and capitalizing on your action? What stories highlight what you could do to fill a gap in their team or organization?

Tell your story in such a way that the listener is excited by the potential of having you on the team. You must tell that story such, that they picture you doing what needs to be done for them. This is very subtle and it is a common technique used by the great storytellers throughout the ages. Allow your listener, the interviewer, to fill in the details in their own mind just like old time radio allowed the listener to create the scenes of Little Orphan Annie, Jack Armstrong or The Shadow in our parents and grandparents minds.

You do this by offering only as much detail as is needed to set the stage; this allows them to identify your story with their challenge, problem or situation. When the interviewee goes into too much detail about the problem, it draws attention to the differences with the problems that the interviewer is faced with. When the candidate drops the name of the past company or the vendors and customers, it prevents the listener from envisioning current company’s vendors and customers.

Then you end your story by describing the results of the actions you took. Relate how you saved the customer’s business that equated to $100,000.00. Or how you helped a new employee be successful and changed the whole team’s attitude and esprit-de-corps. Or whatever the outcome was in your story.

Telling your stories to interviewers in this way drive home that you are the right candidate for the job. It gives them that material they need to justify hiring you over the others interviewed. They like you best because you were a wonderful guest and provided them with all they need to feel good about hiring you.

Speak Slowly and Carry a Good Story

Sister played by Whoppi Goldberg 

In 5th grade, Sr. Mary Armond taught us about President Teddy Roosevelt and I remember learning about his foreign policy that was encapsulated in the quotation: "Speak softly and carry a big stick...” However, there was more to this quotation. He added, “...you will go far." 

This worked for Teddy and it can also work for someone who’s looking for a new job. For interviews, Teddy might have made a little tweak to his trademark phrase: “speak slowly and carry a good story, you will go far.” This is really an important consideration in communicating your value to an interviewer. If you have any kind of speech issue this is even more important. I have clients who were not born in this country and have an accent. When they talk to someone who isn’t used to their accent, they are hard to understand. Additionally, when we are nervous we have the tendency to speak faster than normal. Added to an accent, you could lose an opportunity that is a perfect fit because the interviewer doesn’t know what you’re saying. 

Slowing down is a technique I use when I deliver a presentation. I’ll slow down the pace of my speech when I come to a key point I want to impress on my audience. You can also do this in an interview. Having a well practiced and rehearsed set of stories will help you slow down your speech. I recommend using a S-A-R format. Delivering the key point of a story without a lot of extra talking is the best reason to tell stories this way. Situation (what was the problem you fixed), Action you took and Results that you obtained. This format also promotes conversation with the interviewer rather than you carrying on a monologue.  

A good story really needs a good ending more than it need a lot of detail. Think about how an interview works. Most people want to tell all the facts of what the problem or situation was and then move into lots of complicated actions they took. Often people will completely forget to state the end of the story and fail to relate the results.
 

Being too specific in telling a success story forces the listener to picture the exact situation you’re describing. But isn’t that want you want to do? Not really. You really want to tell a story in a way that gets the interviewer to see you doing the same thing for their company. If you leave out the detail, the interviewer will interject his or her own environment into your story. So leave out the name of the companies in your stories. Leave out names of proprietary tools, specific cities, total numbers of lines of code, color of people’s clothes or the name of the divisional VP. If you drop a name, they cannot picture themselves in the story.  

So speak slowly and carry a good story and you’ll be successful.