How do you sell yourself at a job interview?

How do you sell yourself during a job interview?

Do you struggle with the idea of how to sell yourself during a job interview. I've had the pleasure of supporting hundreds of clients to become better prepared, more authentic and more dynamic candidates who possess excellent communication skills and a polished interview technique. These clients are experienced professionals and subject matter experts who really know their stuff (and sometimes enthusiastic and driven graduates or under-graduates en-route to this point.) They are assets to their organisations with a rich history of adding value. A common challenge that many of them face? Being able to put their best foot forward and sell themselves. 

How do I put my best foot forward?

To do this successfully, we need to look at how we're communicating. What we say about ourselves, the experiences we're discussing and, naturally, the structure we use when verbalising our responses to tough interview questions. This structure matters most when we answer competency and behavioural based interview questions - those that begin with "Tell me about a time...", or "Give me an example of an occasion when". These questions require a response that is presented like a narrative which has a beginning, middle and end. In order to help clients create responses that are cohesive and compelling, I use the STAR model. 

In order to identify meaningful experiences that translate into effective responses, we need to consider which narratives will be most meaningful to our interviewers.  The standard approach usually begins by deciding which situations we've been in that demonstrate our effective usage of a particular competency (i.e communication skills) or behaviour (i.e leading by example) that appears on the job description. From there, we're able to create a synergy between ourselves and our experience and the attributes required to be successful in the role.

Sometimes, however, it can be hard to join up the dots. We discuss how we leveraged a particular competency or behaviour but struggle to make a link between how using these attributes led to success on an individual, team, departmental and organisational level. I call this seeing the big picture, and the work I undertake with my clients helps them to make these connections, and, therefore, find ways to celebrate their contributions, successes and achievements (in turn putting their best foot forward and selling themselves). 

However, while this is an effective approach, sometimes our biggest and most impressive contributions, achievements and successes can still remain unmentioned. And the ability to celebrate our biggest contributions and sell ourselves is limited. Which is why I advocate a two-tier approach to identifying and developing worthy STAR based responses. 

What other approach can I use?

In addition to the approach mentioned above, start this process from another angle. Begin by thinking of your biggest ever achievements, contributions, successes, positive outcomes or value add experiences. Those experiences that make you most proud (successfully leading a team through a period of transformation, identifying and mitigating a serious workplace risk, creating organisational insights by drawing on your analytical skills, drawing on your technical expertise to solve a challenging problem etc).

Continuing to use the STAR model, put pen to paper and write these situations down (remembering that the goal here is to jog the memory banks, not learn how to recite what you have written down like a script). Stop, pause and reflect back. In the body of your text, how many different competencies or behaviours can you see are present? Your narrative might be about successfully leading a team, however closer inspection will allow you to identify a range of other competencies and behaviours too (resilience, communication skills, having empathy, teamwork, problem solving, being decisive etc). 

The more competencies and behaviours you can identify, the easier it becomes to see how any one example could potentially be used to answer a range of different competency or behavioural questions. In addition to making us more agile in an interview, this approach offers us a greater opportunity to showcase and celebrate ourselves and our most successful moments, relevant organisational contributions or achievements. And this is a superb way to put our best foot forward and sell ourselves!