One of the most common things we coach people on at Skills Lab is how to have more confidence during an interview. Have you been caught off guard by a question or failed to recall that great experience from a few years back? You aren’t alone. Walking away from an interview and feeling like you missed the mark, kills your confidence for future interviews. Preparing a few great stories of your past experience will build confidence and leave you with a good feeling at the end. This type of preparation will help you sell your skills in a confident and genuine way.
Interviewers want to hear about your experiences handling certain types of scenarios that will be common to the job that you are interviewing for. The “tell me about a time” questions are called behavior interview questions. They want to see if and how you have handled similar tasks and situations that you’ll inevitably tackle in their job. Here are our best tips at how to prepare for behavioral questions before walking into an interview.
1. Start with a list of common interview questions. This will help you anticipate what might be asked and prepare stories that fit a number of these questions.
2. Think of 2-3 past experiences that you can concentrate on.
- Professional experiences are best.
- Variety of scenarios or workplaces are ideal.
- They don’t have to be from your most recent job.
- They don’t all have to have a positive outcome.
- Key to show learning and growth from each story.
3. Outline each story (written is best) and detail:
- Setting the scene
- What is your role
- The conflict or problem
- The outcome(s) (good and bad)
- Learnings and what you might do differently afterward
4. Connect each story to the common interview questions that it best answers. Some stories will be used to answer multiple questions. Your experiences have multiple elements, therefore you can use the same story to answer a question about handling conflict, and a question about dealing with difficult customers.
5. Review the story outlines and connecting questions several times before your interview. We recommend to take the outline with you as a ‘cheat sheet’ to glance at if needed during an interview. The more times that you practice the stories, the more you will refine and hone how you tell them. This helps the key elements and skills emerge.
Preparation really is key to confidence during and after an interview. No more walking away, kicking yourself over everything you wish you would have said.
