Originally published on Forbes.com by Contributor
Despite high-profile layoffs and concerns about the economy, the job market is strong and now is a great time to advance your career—and interviewing skills will be critical to your success.
Interviewing can be tough because even if you change jobs frequently, it’s not something you do very regularly. In addition, interviewing is fraught with emotion—the nerves that come from presenting yourself or seeking to impress the interviewer and the pressure based on how much you want the job.
But you can rock the interview. Beyond how you design your resume, what you wear or how you show up—perhaps most important is what you say and how you communicate the potential match between your contribution and the role.
A big part of interviewing is confidence, and it may be helpful to know the odds are in your favor. Overall, trends for hiring are positive, and among those who were laid off, more than 70% found a job within three months, according to a poll by to Revelio Labs.
In addition, 85% of companies reported they are hiring people in short timeframes—less than four weeks on average—based on data from Employ Inc. HR professionals are also reporting they’re struggling to find people with 81% saying is challenging and 33% saying it’s very challenging to find the talent they require.
All this is very good if you’re looking for your next opportunity (and who isn’t?).
One of the challenges in the interview process is the bulk of what you want to communicate—about your capability, your brilliance and the match you perceive to the job and the company. But with so much to cover, here’s what you should prioritize in the time you have—and how to make the biggest impact.
Show a Track Record of Success
One of the first things you’ll want to communicate is your previous success. In today’s climate, hiring managers want to bet on people who have had great accomplishments to-date. Be ready to share examples of what you’ve done and how you’ve had impact. Avoid talking just about your job titles which are typically less meaningful. In addition, be sure to share what you’ve achieved in your roles. If you can quantify your impact, that’s even better.
Even if your experience has been limited, you can talk about what you’ve done. Perhaps you’ve only had one or two jobs, but you expanded the influence of the brand in your social media efforts, you improved the connectedness of the department with your internal networking and you jumped into help with a high-profile problem which required teamwork to solve. Think in terms of the outcomes you’ve created, not just the constraints of the job title or description.
Be specific, rather than general in how you communicate your results. Share the situation you faced, the task you were responsible for, the action you took and the result you drove. Also reinforce the ways you worked effectively with others. You want to emphasize your individual results, but also demonstrate how you collaborate, communicate and build strong relationships. Remember storytelling will be more memorable (think: sticky) for interviewers.
Talk about Future Value
In addition to articulating your previous experience, you will also want to talk about your future value to the organization. Leaders want to hire someone who can hit the ground running in terms of the skills they already possess, but they also want to invest in someone who will add value over time. In today’s world, that means people who can learn, grow, adapt and adjust.
You’ll want to balance talking about your enthusiasm for the role you’re pursuing along with the growth you’re interested in. Share why you’re excited about the job and also your passions and interests for the future. Be clear about your desire to contribute now and in expanding ways over time—adapting with the needs of the role and the company as markets, customers and competition shift.
Plenty of companies are struggling to keep great people, so interviewers will be happy to hear about how you want to commit to a career with the company. They also know career development and learning are key to individual satisfaction and performance—so they’ll be listening for your desire to grow, learn and develop yourself.
Show Interest in the Position
A red flag for an interviewer is the person who talks too much about their interest in the company and not enough about their interest in the job. You want to be sure and do both. Managers don’t want to hire someone who is just looking for a foot in the door or a stepping stone to another role. They want to know you’re genuinely interested in the job they’re looking to fill.
Talk about what you understand about the job and your potential fit. Also ask questions about the role so you’re not being presumptuous that you already understand it perfectly. As you learn about it, be conversational in responding about what makes it especially interesting to you and how you could have positive impact.
Also show you’re interested in the company and in growing with the organization. Avoid simply saying “I admire your company.” Instead, show you’ve done your homework on the company through the questions you ask and the references you make to the culture, the products, the customers or the markets.
Again, strike a good balance—between indicating interest in the role and also in the organization.
Talk Up Your Skills
Also be ready to talk about your skills. You’ll want to do this not by listing them, but by telling stories which demonstrate your talents and how you put them into practice. Employers will be listening for both “soft skills” such as communication or teamwork as well as “hard skills” such as negotiation or foreign language skills. While the descriptions of “soft” and “hard” skills are less helpful—after all, soft skills are hard to come by and they certainly create measurable results—they are still helpful in clarifying what you want to share.
Give examples which demonstrate a mix of skills. Tell about how you listened to a customer need, identified a tough problem, led the team, applied your data analysis or design thinking skills and sold a new solution, resulting in increases in customer satisfaction. Talk about how your critical thinking skills or your creativity helped move your project team along and helped accomplish a breakthrough for the result you’d been working toward for months.
Give an example about how your flexibility, resilience and openness to new learning allowed your boss to shift your responsibilities when the organization faced a tough problem and needed more people allocated to develop a new innovation. Talk about how you demonstrated emotional intelligence and empathy as you asked questions, listened and supported a team member though a challenging issue.
Overall, some of the hottest skills today—those employers are looking for most—are critical thinking, design thinking, curiosity, creativity and problem-solving skills. They also include communication, empathy, listening, resilience and flexibility. In addition, hiring leaders want organizational and project management skills as well as attention to detail. Also consider how you can demonstrate your digital, design or analytical skills as well as your skills in negotiating, writing and foreign languages.
Plan for the stories you’ll tell, ensuring each concise example embeds these key skills.
Come Across Professionally
As you’re communicating plenty of content about yourself and your interest in the role and the company, you’ll also want to establish rapport with the interviewer. Be confident but also curious. Prepare questions and listen to the answers. Give your full attention to the interviewer. Take a professional tone, but an easy manner in which you communicate your authenticity.
You’re putting your best foot forward, but also be yourself. Hiring leaders will be discerning your fit, and you should be too. Because your greatest success and your greatest contribution will result when you find the best match between you, the job, the leader and the company.
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