Gary Will's WORKSEARCH:
Selling Yourself To An Employer
Chapter 9: (continued)
Preparing to Answer
From the book How to Prepare for an Employment Interview.
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This book shows you how to sell yourself in an employment interview.
[Chapter 9: continued from here
] ...The impact your answers have on the interviewer will depend on how well you tap into their aspirations and the organization's objectives, and how effectively you allay their fears about making a bad hiring decision. How credible your answers are perceived to be will depend on the evidence that you can present to back up your claims.
You've already thought about what you offer to the employer. Now you want to concentrate on the evidence you can bring forth in the interview.
There are two fundamental ways to provide evidence. Ideally, you'd like your answers to combine both of these elements:
1.Stories about what you've done in the past that demonstrate what you can do for this employer in the future.
2.A demonstration in the interview that you understand the employer's problems or objectives and have the ability to help them achieve their objectives.
We'll go through both approaches in this chapter.
Telling stories-the "PART" method
There are two reasons you should be prepared to tell stories about your experience and the contributions you've made to other organizations. The first is that specifics are more credible than generalities. Anyone can claim to have the necessary abilities, but your claim will be much more believable if you can describe a specific time when you demonstrated these skills or traits.
Instead of just making a claim, you're presenting solid evidence. Not only will you make your points more credible, you'll make them more memorable too.
The second reason to be ready to describe some situations you've handled in the past is that ...[continued here]
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