Recently, I had the opportunity to deliver a session on Organisational Storytelling to post graduate students of one of Singapore’s most reputed universities. Over these two days of engagement, the students and I worked on lots of scenarios, like communicating your idea to investors, presenting with stories, making a case using stories, and so on. At one stage over the two days, I noticed that most of the students were very keen to learn Storytelling for interviews and the burning question was,
How do I prepare for my upcoming interviews?
So, here is what my knowledge, experience and insights tell me about making yourself a successful communicator in an interview.
Let’s start by looking at how hiring has changed.
We all know hiring is typically focused on skills, and our resumes that reflect our work experience gives the interviewer an idea of what skills we might have. However, according to Jacob Morgan, author of Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization, there’s more to it than skills. “The world is changing so quickly that by the time new college students graduate, much of what they learned is far less relevant and in many cases obsolete,” he says. “Knowledge and experience are no longer the primary commodity. Instead, what is far more valuable is having the ability to learn and apply those learnings into new and unique scenarios.”
So, as the world moves forward, we are moving away from a resume and skills-based hiring process. Companies are now looking for a candidate’s thinking process, problem-solving abilities, ability to have a point of view, how they use their knowledge to think big, and how they work with others.
So, let’s assume that you are brilliant at all things required of a perfect candidate, but have you ever thought in those few interview minutes how you are going to demonstrate that you have what it takes to be a super hire? There is only one way to achieve that, and that is – your ability to be able to communicate well.
Let’s start your interview preparation in 3 different areas.
#1 YOU  |
#2 COMPANY
|
# 3 *PANEL
|
| Why do you think you are the right candidate for this role? | What do you think about the future of our industry? | Who is in the interview panel? |
| What are your strengths and weaknesses? | Why do you think we are the right employer for you? | What are their roles? |
| Tell us about yourself | What do you think our area of focus needs to be? | Check their Linkedin Profiles |
| Why are you changing jobs? | See if you can find anything in common with the panelists, company, countries, education, etc. | |
| Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years? | The most important question to ask is – What is important to this person? | |
| * for panel we don’t ask questions but prepare |
Now, the reason we have limited each category to 5 questions is not because there are no questions beyond these that can be asked, but because in answering these questions, you will do enough preparation to be able to answer most questions.
After you know what the questions are likely to be, we need to have a method to best answer them. For which let’s turn to Storytelling for Interviews Part 2 of 2 of this blog series.
"I attended your story telling course some time back. And I've enjoyed keeping up my knowledge with your blog. You may not have realised however, that the Whole of Government is implementing Internet Seperation. Hence I'm not able to access the links to read your articles. Could I suggest including a QR code in your emails so that I can use my mobile to scan it and gain immediate access to the article? It would be most helpful"
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