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 second reason to be ready to describe some situations you've handled in the past is that more and more interviewers are specifically asking for these kinds of stories.
Psychologists have been able to collect piles of money from companies by selling training in "behaviour-based" interview techniques. Their guiding axiom is "the best predictor of future performance is past behaviour." As a universal principle, this is patently false, but don't try telling that to someone with interview training. They usually structure employment interviews around getting specific examples of past behaviours.
Most interviews will include questions that begin with "Tell me about a particular time when you ..." If you're meeting with someone from HR, you may find that they won't go on to the next question until you give them a specific incident (sometimes even when there isn't one).
The questions look something like this:
Give me an example where you [faced tasks or situations like you'll find in this job]
Describe experience you have that required [key trait needed for this kind of work]
For example, for a position that requires working closely with others to complete your work you could be asked to describe a situation where you've worked with others as a team. And if you're not asked, you may want to bring the subject up yourself and have a story ready to prove your teamwork abilities.
For each of the key skills and traits you identified, you should think of ...[continued here]
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