You spent countless hours studying, preparing for your career (statistics say in excess of 4,000 hours for college or university students), and possibly years developing it while on the job. Statistics also show that the average interviewee spends less than an hour preparing for a job interview. Or worse, they don’t prepare at all: they assume there’s no way to because they have no idea of what they’re going to be asked in the job interview. This is not true at all.

To a degree, you can predict what you’re going to be asked in a job interview. There’s oodles of information available out there on FAQ’s in interviews – and an hour for prep time just won’t cut it. What to do?

Start with the one question you’re guaranteed to be asked, “Tell me about yourself-“. Write it in story form (don’t make it sound like a list), trim it down to the essentials, and Elephant Walk and Talk it (see Newsletter #8). Why story form?

There are several reasons: First, our neural networks have been shaped in childhood through storytelling to think in narrative form. The story form is therefore easier to remember (than a list) – both for the narrator (interviewee) and listener (interviewer). It is also a way to be engaging (sound flexible and spontaneous) and get your points across without sounding tedious – or worse – over-rehearsed and canned.

Canned responses are a disaster waiting to happen: they convey that you’re unable to think on your feet or that you’re really uptight. This will not incite confidence from your interviewer and may cause the interviewer to think that you’re hiding something.

Tell a ‘story’ instead. Of course you’ll be nervous to some degree before your job interview – everyone is. That’s normal. Putting your information in story form will help you recall it better under stress. Our brains have an innate ability to locate information instantly as long as we have ‘told’ the brain where we’ve filed it. If you’ve written your story, structured its contents logically and studied the ‘arc’ of it’s content (I did this: this was the result: this is how I will apply what I learned to this job) it will be a cake-walk for you to recall – sound fresh every time and knock the socks off any interviewer. Need help structuring your story?

Read the next interview coach Interview Tip: Write is Might!

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