Gwen, is it fair to say resume is to pass the first screening stage to get an interview yes
once you get an interview your resume doesn't have much power no actually it sounds a little
odd okay but let me be really clear if on my resume it says I manage the customer service
team that doesn't really tell me a whole lot and so if you are fortunate enough to get an
interview I'm going to have to ask you a bunch of questions about what you do and I'm likely
going to ask you generic questions like tell me about a time when if however you've written
your bullets you've highlighted the goals and accomplishments that you've attained how you've
done that I'm going to be so enticed that I'm going to want to talk specifically about that
so let me let me go back to something I showed you before when I said to you these
highlights if I put this on my resume I guarantee you 100% probability no variation that an
interviewer will ask you how you did that and what is the difference between a what and a how so if
you say I ran the customer service team I'm going to have to say what how tell me about a time when
tell me a what if you say I improve customer service by implementing A system that did this
that and the other thing I'm going to say how did you do that you want me in an interview to ask you
how did you do that why because now you're going to regail me with that awesome accomplishment
that you you know I care about which is a leading indicator of what you're going to need to do in
the new jab versus I'm asking you other questions to try to get clarification of what you do what
actually happened as a result of what you do then I have to determine if I even care about that
and now you're burning minutes in your interview and you're not selling yourself you're answering
clarifying questions or Worse you're answering silly behavioral interview questions that have
nothing to do with how you're going to perform in the job the other thing is when you construct okay
yeah uh let's see it's Thursday on on Monday or two I've had so many coaching sessions the last
three I had like three or four a day every day and then I think it was Tuesday I had three in
a row three women in a row and all different types of individuals and all to every single
one of them all three of them asked me Andy I get this tell me about a time when you failed question
to which they say you know I get get nervous and I'm not sure and this and I'm like hold
on hold on okay number one it's a dumb question but that's okay cuz we can't control that right
I can only control your preparation or influence your preparation not the questions you're going
to ask you so then I said to each one of them I asked the same question do you usually get
that question after they ask you about a raging success or strength every single one of them said
yes because that stands to reason tell me about a success tell me about a failure much of the
time that's the sequence okay now you saw the job description and you saw the breakdown and you saw
how somebody can prepare for that okay I'm going to go into the interview if they ask me Andy can
you tell me about a challenge you overcame Andy can you tell me about a raging success Andy could
you tell me how you did that project Andy can you tell me how you built the this and that they're
getting the same exact story any question they ask me I'm going to my bread andb butter question
that aligns to what they need me to do and I'm going to tell them that and I'm going to give
it to them in full then they're going to say and if they say tell me about a great outcome a huge
success you're getting that story number one and then when they say Andy tell me about the time
you failed I'm going to say you know that story I just told you that was so awesome that already
makes you want to hire me but you asked me this question as a matter of formality anyway right
well there was this step inside that project where when I hit this we actually hit a big
snag that's the story you tell it's not just when you tell the story it's which failure you choose
in the context of the greater success it always happens that way so what you're doing is you're
now talking about something that they know ended well you you overcome it obviously because you
brought it up inside a success story and so on so we when we were prepping for their interviews we
gave them their backbone story I call it and then we gave them the pick of the failure we
gave them the pick of the obstacles we gave them the pick of the whatevers we gave them the pick
of the disagreement like everything comes out of the same tree it's just a different Leaf okay so
you're not trying to many of you are trying to figure out how to answer individual interview
questions that does not win you the job figuring out how to sell yourself according to what they
need wins you the job you then pick the story from that and nothing else so when you talk about Gwen
this is a great question because when you talk about does the resume set you up this bullet
this story is on the resum and it's probably up top I could be 90% sure they're going to ask me
about it and then everything's going to fall out from there and my prep becomes expedited
and everything else makes more sense to them so that's a great question it resume doesn't just
get you an interview it sets the table for the how not the what that's great question