Showing you can do the job is critical when interviewing for a job
Here's how you can do it
If the objective of the resume is to get maximum check marks between your job skills and the job description to secure a first interview, then the first interview is all about proving you can do the work – check marks confirming you know how to do what you said you could do on the resume. Been there, done that. Prove that, and you can get a second interview — or a job offer.
Your resume says you can do the job—now you have to show how you did it during the interview.
This is one area where people fail—their interview answers don’t match their resumes, and they don’t get the checkmarks necessary to prove they can do the job.
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Candidates often don’t even answer the question
For example, the candidate’s resume said he managed the software defect list. When asked how he managed the list, the answer was about how developers were assigned the defects, went and fixed the defects, had the updated tested, and then rolled out to production. This happened in one of my job interviews
It had nothing to do with how he managed the list but how the defect was resolved. For example, after identifying the defect, he could assign it to a developer. Then, he could maintain the status of the defect through drop-down menus and manage it through the various stages of the defect resolution: assigned, root cause identified, placed into the test system, tested, promoted to production, and closed. This would have answered the question.
While there are many ways to manage a list, he never identified how the list was managed.
Just as you need check marks on the job description to get the interview, to move on, you need to get the check mark that identifies managing the defect list and then the check mark that shows you know how to do it. The more check marks you get confirming what you say on your resume is what you did, the better your chance of moving on.
You need to show you have a considered, structured approach to your work
This is a cumulative thing. If the vast majority of your answers take the long, rambling road to what you did without demonstrating organization or structure, you won’t succeed.
Think of your audience. They will never know all the details you know about what you did. Besides showing you can do the work, your job is to create a narrative or story that shows how you did the work in a logical, concise way that shows you can do the job.
While I don’t want to minimize the story to bullet points, it’s not a bad analogy. You did these X things to manage, analyze, or move something forward, and you have the story of the context, the actions, and the results to prove it.
You need to demonstrate what YOU did, not what the overall effort did
Your audience must understand the context of the work that was done. You need that to establish common ground with your audience.
However, you need to show your role in the work and how what you did contributed to the overall effort.
Many candidates will offer their responses with “We We We” did this or that or “The Team The Team The Team” did these things. Hiring managers are not hiring a team of “we”; they are hiring you. This is the one time you need to clearly identify what you did as part of the work effort to show you can do the job.
You need to answer the question. Then shut up.
One of the overall patterns of the interviews I conducted was that the candidate would talk. And talk. And talk. And talk some more. You often had to interrupt them to get to an actual answer or to move on to the next question.
When a candidate talks that much in an interview, they tell you that they didn’t listen to the question or don’t want to answer it. Don’t be that person.
Instead, take two seconds to organize your answer, and if you don’t fully understand the question, ask a clarifying question.
Then, do a 2-3 sentence context to provide context to the interviewer. “This work was to update the ordering process for our department. My role was to examine and update the process so IT could begin programming.”
Then, spend some time describing your accomplishments from that work. “After interviewing people, I generated a process flow document describing each step and improvement recommendations. That was then reviewed by stakeholders for accuracy, including recommendations for streamlining the process using AI.”
Finally, describe the result of that work. “After implementing the recommendations, our order processing time was reduced by two days.”
Then, shut up.
Note how short the answer is while giving the interviewer much information about what you did. This will often allow you to answer follow-up questions based on your answers. For example, “What were some of the recommendations?”
Then, you reply using the same method, perhaps with a couple of sentences on what was being done in the current process, what recommendations were made to improve it, and how much this particular recommendation contributed to the overall accomplishment.
This now begins to be more of a conversation rather than an interview. All because you had concise answers.
Interviews are a distinct skill set for job seekers
You can have a terrific resume. Getting all those checkmarks for your skills against the job description and pointing out accomplishments. But, if you can’t demonstrate a structure to your work, show what YOU did as part of that work, and then blabber on and on for ten minutes answering a question, you won’t get the position.
It’s that simple. And that hard.
Be a Cubicle Warrior,
Scot