The Interview “Trick”
Hi all, I’m back with another entry after a little break to recharge and catch up on work. I used to think taking a “vacation from a vacation” was just something millennials said, but now that I actually experience working a job around 350 days of the year, I get it. It isn’t just a saying guys. Cherish your time, go eat an ice cream, and get a full 9 hours of sleep because it becomes much harder to make the excuses once you have no time to make them.
But speaking of jobs, I realized that in some of my past entries, I’ve touched on job searches and how to interview for your dream job, but what I haven’t covered is my interviewing trick. Without making this too much of a shameless plug, this trick-or I should I say tool- you can use while interviewing has a 100% success rate, and I’ve used it for my friends on both coasts of the country as they interview for every field imaginable: marketing to teaching to laboratory science to government work. At this point, I should just keep it to myself or publish a book called “How to Get a Job” but that sounds like a lot of work. A blog post is shorter and more effective. So if you’ve read this far, congratulations- this short yet impactful post may just be the most important blog you’ve ever read. Or the only one, if you’re like most of my readers😊
My “interview trick” is called switching the story, and I’m here to walk you through why it qualms the major anxieties of the interview process, how it presents an alternative, and take you step by step through the template I use.
So first, I can imagine that if you think of the interview process, the worst part of it is the uncertainty since you hardly ever know exactly what you’ll be asked. As my favorite movie heroine, Forrest Gump, points out: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Turns out that applies to interviewing as well, because no matter how many interviews I’ve done, especially sophomore year when the list kept growing and growing, I felt like each one only confused me more. Interviews aren’t tests you can memorize material for, yet the majority of interviewees – especially novices – pretend that they are. In fact, the commonly accepted curriculum around interviewing is the one where “practice makes perfect”. Memorize a story well enough, inflate it up, and spit it out like a printer spits out an extra copy in the office. Sadly, none of us are printers. So when we go into our interviews, the inverse happens. Desperate to get out every word we rehearsed during the phenomenon known as “mock interviews”, we stumble over our sentences and come off like broken scripts. The interviewers are left believing we don’t know what we’re talking about, and no matter what the role, that is never a good look.
When I was in college, I took and was a TA for a course all about the interviewing process. While it was an interesting class that probably set in motion much of my last few years, what it instilled in me was that getting a job was down to the STAR+E model. When asked a behavioral question, I should answer with a story, one that identified a situation, task, action, and result- then followed it up with an evaluation of what I learned from the process. I believed then and still believe that this process DOES have value, especially once you have been interviewing for years. When it comes to any kind of storytelling, but especially answering interview questions, one has to identify stories and follow through on them- not just any stories, but those that answer the critical and commonly asked questions. For example, to the exhausted question of “describe a time you balanced multiple priorities”, a well-rounded response must address a specific time this happened with the before, during, and after of the interaction. So a good answer would be something like this:
“One time I recall balancing multiple priorities was in March of 2023, when I was given new responsibilities as the key account manager on two of the Safeway Seattle desks (situation). Used to my existing obligations for my previous account, it was overwhelming to fathom adding new tools and abilities while keeping the same standard of work ongoing in the role I was already doing (task). To balance both, I created realistic expectations and goals that related to both my current and new position. Each week, I listed out what I would do on both accounts to learn and master one role while advancing growth in the role I had already mastered(action). Not only did this keep me on track professionally, it kept me focused on attainable goals, because I made sure that I knew I could not expect the same level of growth within my new responsibilities right off the bat. As a result, I achieved strong revenue growth in my first sales role, but grew professionally in my new responsibilities, becoming proficient with the new tools required of me (result). Where in the past I had rushed myself to mastery and missed key details by setting unrealistic expectations, this experience taught me that the critical piece to balance is being flexible and comprehensive with your goal setting (evaluation).”
Now we’re almost two pages in and no interviewing trick like I promised, so I’m going to have some angry readers unless I drop it now. While the above answer is good, and I think the STAR+E tool is helpful with organizing answers, the problem is still that memorizing these stories in this hyper-fixated order of sentences just….isn’t natural. And whenever something isn’t natural, its both awkward to do and awkward to believe. So instead of spending hours asking your college friends to mock interview you by looking up “top 20 behavioral questions” and rattling them off at you, get out a piece of paper and do the following.
1.) Break the piece of paper into three columns with between 6-10 rows
2.) Label the columns: story, context, and questions
3.) As with everything, do this process from left to right, beginning with the story section
4.) Filling in up to ten stories, forget about interviewing and just think of the things that have happened to you in the past five years that have “defined your life”, meaning:
a. Stories that have made you reconsider whats important in life or how to go about things
b. Stories where you have learned a valuable lesson
c. Stories that have redefined YOU or made you a stronger person in some way
d. Stories around difficulty and overcoming obstacles
e. Stories around people in life that have played an important role in your development
5.) The reason I say to not consider anything career-related is because this will sku the stories you come up with. At this stage, the important piece is just recognizing what you feel has impacted you.
6.) Do NOT regurgitate every word of what happened, or every part of the STAR+E puzzle onto your piece of paper. Instead, fill in the 6-10 rows (depending on how many apply to you) with 2-3 words that would be effective in a game of “heads up” in getting you to recognize that story again.
a. For example, for the story above, I might put “Safeway Seattle promotion”
7.) The other important piece is that there is variety in the stories you tell. To ensure that there is, move to the second column and just put down one word that relates to what part of life your story is tied to. If it’s a story about you at work, you would put professional. Other options are personal, social, academic, extracurricular, philanthropic, etc.
8.) Make sure you have a well-rounded number of story types in column two. I would say you want to lean slightly heavily into the professional category, but DO NOT put make them all this kind!! One of the best signs of experience is a person who has learned valuable lessons in all facets of life.
9.) Now for the part where it all makes sense: in the right-most column, add a couple questions per row that you have heard being commonly asked that YOU THINK each story COULD answer. Each one of the six or so stories should have at least 3-4 that could link to it in some way.
a. For example, the story above answers: a time I juggled multiple priorities, a time I asked for help, a time I felt stressed or overwhelmed, a time I attained a goal, a time I had to be creative, etc. etc. etc.
10.) That’s it, you’re done. Now look over the sheet a few times, but DO NOT try to memorize it, and especially do not EVER read it right to left.
See the difference? Instead of hearing the questions and memorizing answers that you think SHOULD be acceptable, you take back the power when you use this “switch the story” approach. Going back to my blog on storytelling, you are the only person that is the expert of the stories you tell. This applies to interviewing as well. You, and only you, are the judge of what happened in the stories you tell, how they are relevant to various questions, and what you learned. The best way to keep it that way is to work from left to right, rather than right to left. In other words, switch the story!
When you appear in interviews, you no longer rack your brain to remember the eloquent way to recite what you’ve told yourself is the correct answer. Instead, the stories flow naturally, typically a few at a time and with the narrative the way they happened. But the cool part is that each time you tell the stories, they change ever so slightly. You never have to worry about telling the same story the same way twice, so they will always be more natural and honest, and the anxiety will fade. It is true that practice will probably make you feel more prepared, but it won’t make you perfect- just more self-aware and well-rounded. This template works because it builds your character as someone who has been through a wide range of experiences that have impacted the way you live but emphasizes that the stories have built you into who you are and you continue to grow and react to whatever comes your way.
I’ve actually created my own template for this strategy, so please reach out to me here or on my social media if you want a copy! But no matter what, remember that the best way to rock the interview stage is to be you. Switching the story is just there to help you remember that the entire way through.
Talk to you all soon!