Illustrating your skills through a good story can win you the job!

At Key Corporate Services, we make it our business to know the skills needed for candidates to present themselves well in an interview.  Crafting and telling good stories that will “set you apart” from other candidates who are vying for the same position is one such skill that’s important.

A recent article by Undercover Recruiter highlighted reasons telling a story was more effective than just “giving answers” during an interview.

As a candidate, effectively illustrating through stories what is unique and professional about you puts you at an advantage over your competition. Why? Because most other candidates will not take this approach. As a matter of fact, most won’t even think about taking it.

Whether the result of anxiety, nervousness or simply a case of being ill-prepared (or unprepared) the typical candidate tends to take a ho-hum, “just the facts, Ma’am” approach to answering a hiring manager’s questions during most job interviews. Not only does this approach brand the candidate as boring, boring, boring, it can also prove to be a sure-fire route to the nearest exit. After all, who wants to hire a bore?!

Savvy candidates tell stories when appropriate (and as long as they are kept relatively brief) that illustrate and highlight their skills and accomplishments when answering a hiring manager’s questions.

For example, if you’re in sales and you were able to increase sales year over year by $800,000, there has to be more to the story that “just luck”.

The real story you tell is how you consistently called on that key account, month after month.  This shows persistence.

And because you had to continue calling on this Key account, you developed new, creative reasons to visit each time.  This shows resilience and creativity!

And, with each visit, being a good salesperson, you probed to learn more about the company’s needs.  You learned of the company’s dissatisfaction with its current supplier because of consistent late deliveries.  With that knowledge, you developed a workable plan to WIN their business away from the competition using your company’s “just in time” inventory management systems. This shows persistence, resilience, creativity and good planning skills!

You have to translate your accomplishments into stories to effectively relate to any hiring manager.

What is Your Story?  Think about it and be prepared to do some “story-telling” next time you interview!

From The Key Corporate Services Blog Team