EP.09 - 3 Steps to Intentional Interview
In light of the “Great Resignation,” interviewing is a skill that matters more than ever. Host Karen Styles discusses this recent trend of quitting and shares her 3 steps to Intentional Interviews.
Transcription
Transcription created with DeScript.
Karen: I’m Karen Styles and this is the Intentional Career Podcast. I talk to all kinds of people who take all kinds of paths to work they love. I'm a career and life coach and owner of Flow +Fire coaching. If you’re ready to create your intentional career with the support of a coach, schedule a call with me. There’s a link in the show notes or go to intentionalcareer.co and click the blue “Schedule a Call” button.
Karen: Hello and welcome to episode nine of the intentional career podcast. I'm so excited you are here with me because I wanted to chat about something that is really important. In my humble opinion, that is interviewing and in particular, making sure that when you interview, you have an intentional interview. So I wanted to share my three steps for an intentional interview, and I bring this up because I've been thinking a lot about and reading about and chatting with people about the great resignation.
And I'm not sure if you've heard this term. We've definitely been talking about it since the spring, in career development, HR, talent management circles. And it is this ongoing trend of folks choosing to leave their positions. And, at first glance, it might seem kind of strange.
Considering there have been mass layoffs around the world, during the pandemic, and whatnot. And now we're also seeing, for the folks who have kept their job. Are looking to leave. And I remember thinking, and even chatting with a couple of friends about it early on in the pandemic, maybe, you know, May of 2020, thinking, there must be a lot of people who are evaluating their work right now.
Right? Who are thinking, hmm, if I was putting off life or putting off things and saying, well, it's okay, I'm going to deal with it later. Looking at the results of a pandemic, the whole world shifted. Bunch of ways. And people are really thinking about what they want and maybe they don't want to put off their careers or maybe they've had enough. Right? Maybe they have had enough of having a job. That's good enough. That's good enough on paper. Or, you know, really evaluating, how was I treated during the pandemic? Did my employer, did they care about my safety? Was I supported if I had kids and needed to homeschool?
There are so many ways that this affected us and we realize how much our work affects us and how work and lives are intertwined. And so I think the folks who were maybe putting off a decision to leave are now potentially fed up and leaving. In April 2021 alone, the US labor department stated that 4 million people left their jobs.
That's only in the US and that's only in April. And there are many more stats out there. I believe that Microsoft did a global survey of their employees worldwide and found that 40, I believe it's 40% of employees were planning to leave their role in the next six months. So that's a lot.
So there are a lot of people leaving and there are a lot of people thinking about leaving and when you're looking to land a new role, the interview is a big part of that because let's be honest, people hire you or make an offer after they have met you.
I have worked with many, many people. I have done interview training for the last six years. Honestly, it's one of my favorite things to do. And, over those years, I've worked with hundreds of people literally. And what I love about training for an interview is that I start to see people get more clear on who they are and what they're good at when they are forced to talk about it. Maybe forced is the wrong word, but kind of, you know, a lot of times you, maybe don't have to talk about your work or communicate what you're good at, or get into the details of how you do what you do, but when you're in an interview, you do. And the interesting thing is that it can be a real confidence builder, and it can really help you identify the work you're good at, the work you love. And really, I do think that interview training and going through the interview process can lead you to work you love.
All that to say, coming back to my three steps for an intentional interview. So step number one is to know what you want.
This might go to before you're actually interviewed. It might even be before you start your job search, if you're going into a job search, but think about what it is you want from your next role from your next position? What do you want it to look like?
What do you want it to feel like? And this takes some time. And if you don't know right now, there are some things that you can think about or ask yourself things like, what size of a company might be great to work for? What kind of team dynamics do I want? Do you want to be on a large team or a smaller team?
Do you want to be more of a solo contributor? Do you want to lead other people? You know, the relationship aspect of it. What kind of elements of company culture are you looking for? What are the activities that you want to be doing in your day to day? So that might relate to your skills and the things that you enjoy doing.
It's worth reflecting on your past experiences, sometimes just take some time to, but it's so valuable to go back and think through the times in the past, or you felt really great at work, right? Where are the, what were the things that you were doing? What were the relationships that you had? What were the things that made you proud? So identify those pieces from the past to say, there are these elements that I would like to experience again.
And on the other hand, there might be things that you don't want to experience again. You might know that there are certain things you don't want to do, people you don't want to work with, or companies that you're not interested in, and both sides of those things are important. There might also be things that you don't know about yet, things that you want to experience that you haven't, that might be question marks. Those might be things that you try to learn about through the interview process or through your networking.
You can get a lot of clues from your past experience about what you want in the future. So, that's step number one, know what you want before you even get into a job search. Know what you're looking for, right? Take a proactive approach. And this means that you're not just going out and looking for job postings and applying that's really reactive, but thinking in advance.
You know: What are the companies? What are the types of work? What are the roles? What are the people? Those kinds of things have that goal in mind for yourself before you begin step number two.
After what you want, step number two is you will want to prepare and gather stories from your past work experience because these are the things that you're going to talk about in the interview. So think about the things that you are proud of. And maybe I should take a step back for a second and mention that a lot of job search is remembering. Sometimes we don't remember all of the many, many things that we've done over our work life so we need to take the time to remember and write it down.
It's really helpful to keep this in one place, start a Google document or something like that so that you can start gathering your stories, putting them all together in one place, and you don't have to start from scratch every time you go to an interview. So, start gathering stories and you might start just by brainstorming.
What are the things you're proud of? Where were times that you felt proud or felt really alive or felt good in your work? Think of the things that you've achieved. Those might be things that you personally feel proud of. They might be things that your colleagues have complimented you for, maybe things that were noticed in an annual review. Try to remember all that stuff. The stuff does take time, but as you get into kind of digging through your memories, you will start to discover and remember those things.
And if you are having a hard time, remember it's worth connecting and having a conversation with maybe current or past colleagues and ask them, what am I good at? What am I known for? What do you come to me for help with or advice on those types of things?
I find that very often, and this was something I learned early in my career from my former district manager and now good friend, Dani — shout out to Dani. She mentioned to me that many times when a person is good at something, they discount it. They think, oh, well, everybody does that. That's normal. Anyone would do this, but that's often not true.
So, people who are good at their work discount the quality of their work, and that's why we need other people to remind us of it, right? They might say, oh, you're you are so good at remembering the names and the details of everyone you meet and you might think, well, that's normal. That's what everyone should do. But no, if that's something that you do and it could have a really big impact on your role, on your company, on how people feel around you. And so this is why it's so important to have that feedback from other people in our lives who tell us that we're good at something.
And have them maybe explain why, if you're like, well, that's not a big deal, ask more questions and see what they say, and you'll get an insight. The things that are obvious to you, they're normal. Those things that you are really great at, and that are really easy for you. They're often not easy for other people. And that's how you make a difference in your work.
Other stories to gather would be challenges that you overcame, right? And as I'm saying this, you might have things come to mind immediately, maybe really crappy days or crappy periods in your work life where, you know, something happened that you weren't happy about or that you couldn't control, and you didn't know what to do about. Pay attention to those.
Write them down, start to think about how did I get through that? How did my team get through that? What did we do? What did I learn? You're going to get a lot of really helpful information from those stories. You might even think of things that you did wrong or areas where you made mistakes. Even though those are not fun to look back at.
We often find, I do anyways, sometimes we learn a lot from mistakes. Right? We learn to maybe change our course of action for the future. So all of those areas can be helpful to look at, you know, another side of that too, there might not be big mistakes, but there might be things where you reflect on a situation and looking back a few years after, hindsight is 2020, you might go back and do things differently.
So reflecting on past experiences, that can be really helpful in terms of gathering the stories that you're going to talk about during that interview. So once you know what you want, and you've started to gather your stories. The third step is to say it out loud. And what I mean is, say your interview answers out loud.
So you might have a list of interview questions. If you're a few years into your career, you have a good idea of what interview questions are going to be asked. You may have an idea of the questions that are asked in your industry. Make sure that you practice giving your answers out loud, preferably to another human being.
Maybe this is obvious, but I'm mentioning it anyway because I know that for a lot of folks, the interview. Preparation is maybe writing down their stories, writing down notes, writing down points or details, and thinking about how they would answer it, but they don't actually get to the step of saying that answer out loud.
And it's really important because speaking and writing are different communication mediums. And often when we go to talk about something. It comes out differently than we would have written it down. And actually, that's okay. But it's the spoken part that needs to be practiced. It's not a document that needs to be edited.
For those folks who might try to write down an exact script, I guess if that works for you, that's okay. I wouldn't necessarily, that wouldn't be my advice.
I think the problem that can come with memorization is that if you've written a script and you're kind of halfway through your story, you might hit a point where you're like, oh no, I forgot. I forgot a point. And you're trying to remember your script and that can stress you out and that won't help you in the interview. What we want to do is practice speaking those stories out loud, getting comfortable, sharing those stories in those answers, and making sure we're clear on the verbal delivery of those stories.
So the reason I suggest saying it out loud to another person is when we tell a story, we often have a lot of background information in our minds that seems obvious to us. And so we don't actually fill in all the details that are necessary for the listener to hear. And so that might mean that the story or the answer doesn't have the impact that it could have because we've left out details.
And when I'm working with clients I'll have this happen a lot, to be honest. So I'll hear an interview answer and the biggest thing that comes up when I know that an answer isn't having the impact that it could, is that I listen and I kind of think, I don't get it. Either I don't get it, or so what? Like, okay, you've answered the question, but so what?
However, I have learned that if you've chosen a story and you want to tell that story as an answer for an interview question, usually there's a reason there is an important story to be told there. And when I ask a few more questions, I usually discover more details that really give more impact. So it's so helpful to tell a story to someone and give an interview answer.
And if they're not a coach, they might just go straight to giving you advice, but ask them, does this story make sense, right? And if there's anything that you're like, well, I don't get it. Well, why did you do this? Or why did this? Or I, you know, how long did this happen over? What was the time period? Those were a lot of the questions that I ask when I'm listening to an interview answer.
When you say it out loud to another person, you're going to find out what the impact is. And that's the whole point of this interview conversation, right? That you're communicating something and it has to land somewhere. And you don't know if it lands, if someone else doesn't hear it. So this is where the hypothetical story that we think is working in our mind.
Sometimes it falls flat when we say it out loud because we haven't had the practice doing that. And if you don't have another person that you can talk to. Here's one of the tricks that I offer to a lot of my clients: use your phone, grab your phone, turn on your video or use a voice recorder and answer an interview question, take something like, tell me about yourself, answer that question into your phone and listen back too. And I can guarantee that once you listen back, there's a certain amount of objectivity that comes from listening to it. You'll think, oh, that doesn't make sense. Oh, I need to add a detail. Oh, I could remove this. And it's so, so, so helpful the saying it out loud. This is the biggest thing I'm always telling people, trying to beat it into people's heads.
You've got to say the words out loud in your preparation. Actually, that's where I separate preparation from practice. So preparation might be this brainstorming, detailing the stories, getting the notes, getting them down, thinking about what you want to say. The practice is the part where you say it out loud.
The practice part is as important as the preparation. And I think a lot of folks miss that step because it's that final delivery that's really gonna make an impact in that conversation. So say it out loud, preferably to another human being. And of course, I'm going to bring this back to my practice because it is my podcast after all, but, If you're looking for help on interviewing, I would love to support you if you need the person to say it out loud too, or to pull the details out.
If you're not having success, if you feel like you're struggling, trying to do this on your own, I would love to be the person to help you.
And in my intentional interview, one day training, you can work with me one-on-one and what we do is get you completely ready for an interview all with one day. That's right. We can do it all in one day.
So, if you are feeling like your interview preparation is all over the place, you want to feel in control. If you're not sure what impression that you're leaving in an interview, you want to be sure. If you haven't interviewed in a while and you really want to brush up, that's great for that.
As well, if you keep interviewing, but finding you're not getting offers, it might be somewhere in that delivery. So working with me as your interviewer really could help. And as a former recruiter and as someone who's trained hundreds of people, I really want to help you with your interview as well.
And I want your interview to feel better. I want you to know what impression you're leaving and know that you're leaving a really positive lasting impression. I want you to feel confident that you are speaking clearly about why you're a great candidate. And to know that you've got compelling work stories to share in that interview.
So what happens? What's included in intentional interview training? What we do in one day is we brainstorm and review your experience, your skills, and really what that's going to do is remind you why you're an excellent candidate for the role. Interviewing four. I will introduce some simple frameworks that are going to help you speak clearly and confidently and communicate the message that you want to communicate.
I'm also going to listen really closely to your answers and identify where you need to tweak communication. Like I talked about before, if you tell me a story and it gives me a "so what" feeling I'm going to ask some questions. This is a big part of what I do. I listen. I usually slow down people where they're blowing past the details that are really important.
And I pull those things out so that we can add the evidence and add the impact to that story. You'll also complete your very own interview guidebook, where you'll keep all of your notes and you'll have that for your current and future interviews. We'll also finish with a mock interview where you get to put that all together and practice delivering what you've learned.
I do this virtually. We do meet over zoom and it's one-on-one. So it's just you and me for one day, roughly five hours, including breaks. And we just get you ready. So whether you have an interview coming up soon, or whether you want to just get this practice and start feeling more confident about your job search and your interviewing, this is for you.
I want to help you feel clear and confident in your interviews.
So to recap, the three steps to an intentional interview. Number one, know what you want from your next position. Step two, prepare and gather stories about your achievements, challenges, things you've learned. Number three, say it out loud -- your interview answers, your interview stories. Practice, practice, practice, speaking that out loud.
And if you want to have the confidence of knowing that your next interview will be a great interview, apply now for my intentional interview, one day training, I will put the links in the show notes.
Let's make it happen.
I want to make sure that your next interview is an intentional interview, that you feel authentic and confident about sharing your work stories and knowing that you make an impact in what you do.
Links to the intentional interview one day training are in the show notes.
And I'll be back in two weeks with the next episode. Thanks for joining me.
Thank you so much for listening. It means so much that you spend part of your day with me. If you enjoyed this episode go to Apple Podcasts and leave a 5 star review. It helps other people find the podcast, and my hope is that if more people find the Intentional Career Podcast, then more people can create their Intentional Careers.
If you’re ready to create your intentional career with the support of a coach, schedule a call with me. There’s a link in the show notes or you can go to intentionalcareer.co and click the blue “Schedule a Call” button in the top right corner.
Episodes are released every second Wednesday, so I’ll see you in two weeks for more of the Intentional Career Podcast!
Resources:
Intentional Interview :1 Day Training - Website
“The Great Resignation: How Employers Drove Workers to Quit” - Article
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