Three easy ways to stand out in your next job interview. I’ve found these three things to be very high ROI—they don’t take a ton of extra work, but they can make a major difference.
1. Take advantage of your opening statement: When they ask, “tell me about yourself,” reframe the question to “tell me why you are the perfect person for this job.” That means you should convey three things as you walk through your experiences: 1) You are qualified, 2) You are a high performer, and 3) You are really interested in the position.
2. Always be specific: Mediocre responses are usually mediocre because they are too general. When asked, “tell me about you as a leader,” it’s OK to respond with some high-level principles you believe in, but make sure to back them up with specific examples from your work experience. Specifics are more convincing and more memorable than principles.
3. Don’t forget to discuss your results: With behavioral questions (the “tell me about a time when…” type of questions), candidates are pretty good about discussing what they did to solve a problem, but they often forget to mention what happened next. It doesn’t always have to be a quantifiable result. You just have to tell your interviewer in no uncertain terms that because of your actions, everything worked out well.